Sunday 22 September 2013

They're in the wrong place

The Safari was able to wobble the camera-tripod combo outside the kitchen door this morning in bright sunshine. The sun was just rising enough to peek above the fence. The camera is a little nearer the feeders and more importantly the dirty sitting room window has been taken out of the equation.
It's still a little far these pics are taken at around 2000mm equivalent, the favoured feeder is about 15m away. The way the garden is laid out there are no other places to hang the feeders, unless we could hover over the pond, so if the birds land on the wrong side they are in shadow but that does allow for some interesting lighting effects, like this Greenfinch. We're still shooting at a far too slow shutter speed.
Goldfinches arrived too but our top count was only four. By now the wind had picked up and the feeders were swinging around too much.
They are messy eaters spitting the husks far and wide, another reason not to hang them over the pond.
The best of the bright light on the feeders finished by 10.30 but the tree at the end of next door's garden some 20+m away came into play but birds sitting up there faced the wind, tomorrow's easterlies should provide better opportunities.
We spotted a spider's web shining in the sunlight on their small self-seeded(?) Holly bush.
That tree is a fairly large Rowan tree which is very well berried up and attracting the local Blackbirds.


A Woodpigeon landed briefly on the furthest pergola over the pond, it knew we were stood quietly in the corner by the door and didn't really settle. 
Later a Speckled Wood landed in almost the same place - far too far away to be taking pics of such small things.
It was nice and warm this arvo and we also added Small White, Small Tortoiseshell and Peacock to the garden notebook.
Earlier we'd hoped to record some vis mig but it wasn't to be with just a single Meadow Pipit and a Pied Wagtail going over; for some reason we checked our spreadsheet and discovered the later was new for the garden being #37! Just hope there's not a lot of writing to do tomorrow; we writed more betterer than that when we were five :-)
Just spotted we didn't put the Peacock down. Not sure which is harder scribing in the book or typing on this keyboard, this little missive has taken a little over two hours to produce.
We're a little ahead of Monika in our annual challenge but she could easily win in the garden stakes, only been in her new place for a few short and no doubt very busy weeks and is already very  close to our total, a good autumn will see her pass us easily.
Where to next? We're going nowhere, but you never know what nowhere will produce. Might try a new thing or two but there's no chance of macro for at least three weeks.
In the meantime let us know what's just a few feet too far away in your outback.

2 comments:

Heather Wilde said...

Fabulous garden selection

Anonymous said...

Pretty sure you`ll get there soon, Dave. And good luck with the rest of the garden`s vis-mig.