Dodging May Showers

With the May weather being so appalling (especially the past couple of days with a particularly nasty low pressure system), I have really struggled to spend as much time outside as I would like. As a result, I've visited my wildlife 'patch' at Eynsham Wood very little over the past few weeks, and instead I've tried to continue practicing my wildlife photography in the back garden in between the downpours.

My goal lately has been to try and photograph a wider range of garden birds. House sparrows, starlings, robins and blackbirds have been the most frequent visitors to my back garden feeder perch setup, and whilst they have been very fun (and obliging) to photograph, a little more variety would be much appreciated. 

We have a blue tit pair who (apart from heorically continuing to feed the chicks in our nestbox during this foul weather) have been regularly visiting the feeders. However they tend to avoid using the perch setups on most occasions, and when they do land on them, their visits are so brief that the window of opportunity for photography is very minimal. This species is actually surprisingly tricky to photograph at times, and if it weren't for their abundance, it would be even more difficult. I only managed the image below, with the bird perched atop the bird feeder pole rather than a more natural looking perch. We also have a pair of wrens nest building in a fork of a hazel tree in our garden at the moment, and they have also occasionally visited the feeder perches (albeit predominately for singing). This is another species I would like to target, but unfortunately no such luck yet. Maybe this is more of a long term aim... 

Blue tit on the bird feeder pole

For now then, here's a little selection of photographs I took of the 'usual suspects' during a couple of sessions over the past week or two. 

Robin collecting invertebrates in the back garden

Female blackbird in the back garden

Female house sparrow on a back garden feeder perch

Starling perched in the back garden

Starling in the back garden

Male house sparrow

 

I'm not usually a huge fan of black and white photography for birds, but sometimes portraits can work quite nicely in this format, as demonstrated by this starling. The colour version of this photograph featured a fairly unpleasing greyish background, so my decision to switch to a black and white image was partly influenced by this too. 

Starling in black and white

Hope you all manage to enjoy the weekend and fingers crossed for some slightly less dire weather.