Waiting for the dog.

Happy New Year to you all. This week I had to take Roxy for her haircut in the Forest of Dean. I have to wait for approximately 3 hours so I decided to spend it at Cannop ponds feeder station.
It was very cold, -3 Celsius, and grey. The sun that my weather app promised did not materialise.
I was sitting in my car with coat, snood and gloves on and shooting out of the window. The usual suspects were all there, but in addition I got visits from 2 Marsh Tits, a Grey Wagtail, a Reed Bunting, a GSW and a Long Tailed Tit. I did not get shots of the latter but it was nice to see him.
I felt sorry for the ground feeding birds like the Dunnock as the ground was solid, so I brushed some of the feed onto the floor. The Dunnock were soon joined by a small group of Chaffinch, a couple of male Blackbirds,  and a pair of male Mallards.

Dunnock.

Blackbird,

 
 

The feeder table was extremely busy with birds flitting in and out every few seconds. Great Tit, Blue Tit, Marsh Tit and Coal Tit.

The Robins were extremely well behaved, there was the odd scurry between a couple but for most of the time there were 4 or 5 feeding alongside each other quite happily.

In fact the birds that were doing the most squabbling were the Nuthatches, they spent almost as much time chasing each other off as feeding.

The Grey Wagtail spent quite a lot of time under the feeder table, I felt sorry for him.

The Great Spotted Woodpecker did not come to the table but I witnessed him take bread off the floor. something I didn't know they did, eat bread. I managed a shot of him a little way off. I say him because although you cant see it in this shot he had the red patch on his neck.

all in all an interesting couple of hours.

Merry Xmas

Hi everyone, no pictures today, but there are a few new ones on the smugmug site.

I just wanted to wish you all a Merry Xmas and a snap happy prosperous New Year.

See you all in January

Down and Dirty

Hi all, as autumn moves into winter there's a bit of a lull for me usually. Herefordshire does not have so many birding opportunities as other counties, at least not photographically speaking, and at a time when the summer migrants have gone and the passing winter migrants just are not passing very often as yet I like to turn my attention to Fungi.

I have been mostly out and about for the last month or so trying to add shots to my catalogue of fungi. I've mentioned in the past that finding them and identifying them are two completely different things. Finding them has always been reasonably easy. Photographing them occasionally a bit harder. Identifying them can be darn impossible sometimes. This year I have been very lucky in having the help of Jo Weightman from Herefordshires fungi group. Jo has proved invaluable on a number of occasions, helping me with identifications and pointing me in the right direction for how those identifications can sometimes be made easier.

My efforts and Jo's help have pushed my list of identified fungi to over 40. You can see images of all of them on my Smugmug site (see new gallery in my links). However even with Jo's help sometimes I can only get it down to a family group.

This is one such example:

A tiny, tiny, little fungus. I looked and could not identify it, so I sent Jo a copy and bless her she came back to me and said that without a closer examination she too could not positively ID it. The best she could offer was that it was a Mycena.

Half the fun though is finding them in the first place, then getting as low as possible and obtaining a shot. Getting low often means belly to the ground something which is not easy when your over 20st and suffer with back problems. The getting down is often the easy bit it's the getting back up which causes concern. Lighting things that are at ground level isn't always easy either, shadows are sometimes impossible to avoid. but I am becoming better at it now, I think. Off camera flash work can help.

I have done other things. I spent a day in the Forest of Dean earlier this week during which I had a lengthy stint up Crabtree Hill looking for the Great Grey Shrike. It was there briefly, but distant. This is a huge crop shot. probably 10% or less of the original.

 

I also spent a little time at Cannop Pond feeder station.

But as I said this last month has mostly been about fungi. Please check out the Mycology section of the Smugmug site. Or at least the recent additions for better views of all the fungi I have at this time.

Canon Day.

I am deliberately slow with this post as I've been waiting until Chris G and I had our day out at the invitation of Canon CPS+. Chris kindly invited me to partner him to a day's workshop with Canon at the British Wildlife Centre in Surrey.

Over 340 miles driven on the day and a very long day, but all in all I am still extremely pleased to have attended with Chris. The day could have been slightly better weather wise although we didn't get it half as bad as some of the country. We had wind, we had a tad of rain but we also had some nice periods of sun which made for some ace photography opportunities. The talks by Danny Green and Mark Sissons were both informative and thought provoking, interesting to see similarities between the two but also enough different ideas and approach to keep the interest levels up. It was also nice to see the new kit that Canon have brought out recently and although I didn't try any of it myself there were enough people who did to get a reasonably balanced opinion on things like the 200-400 lens. It appears to have been well received by most.

The photography was good, I think it could perhaps have been better, with a little more cooperation from the animals and birds themselves, but the most obliging were, by far, the two otters we got to photograph up close and personal. A pity that at the time we were with them the weather wasn't the best so very challenging, wet animals grey skies and a lot of movement. Those things do not like being still for the camera :-)

I have only just finished uploading the 550 plus images I took and have quickly grabbed a few examples to show you, I don't doubt they aren't the best from the day but they are ok.

They are, Barn Owl, Eagle Owl, Little Owl, Tawny Owl, Otter, Fox, and Scottish Wild Cat. 

As I said, a very interesting and entertaining day. In a day or two I will be adding other, hopefully better,  shots to my Smugmug gallery so please have a look.

Off and On

As my private life has taken a bit of a dive recently I have struggled to find the enthusiasm for photography, couple that with some terrible weather and thats the reason for such a long spell between Bloggings.

I do have a first though for you to see, I'll come to it shortly. I have been doing a bit of dragonfly spotting.

Southern Hawker Male.

Migrant Hawker Male

Migrant Female

and a Common Darter,

I also managed a bit of feeder photography in the forest whilst waiting for Roxy to have her hair cut.

and whilst in the forest I also got a lizard or two.

A trip down to Devon to help Chris G do a bit of work around his place after his operation gave us the chance to do a moth trap stint, and whilst we didn't get anything exceedingly sexy we got a couple of nice things, this Angle Shades was my favourite.

The star of this posting though has to be the following, I've never seen one knowlingly before so to see it and photograph it was amazing, this was back up in Hereford yesterday, (Mon 8th Sept)

It's the beautiful Brown Argus. It's a bit of a crop but I'm very pleased with it.

Since my last posting I have become a Grandad again, Little Eric Alexander Hodges-Davis arrived.

Here he is with his dad. So Proud.

That's it for this time dont forget to check out the Smugmug gallery, in my links, or at www.briandavis.smugmug.com