Winter gems

A long time since my last post on here! I was not out as much prior to Christmas due to having what seemed like a chesty cold, it turned out to be a lung infection that resulted in low blood oxygen so I ended up in Hospital and unwell over the New Year celebrations, I'm bouncing back to full fitness now though.

I really like the winter, it's the time to spend at a feeding station, mine is now very busy with lots of common woodland birds coming to get photographed, a great reciprocal arrangement, I help them survive the long cold nights by keeping them fed and they pose for pictures! The Robins are now getting ready to pair up for spring, I have one who poses to sing ... next years Christmas cards perhaps!

The other good thing about Winter's short days is that you don't need to get up as early to shoot the sunrise, this puddled farm track is near Burwell in Cambridgeshire.

Below are some more feeder site birds, the Nuthatch is at one of my sites, but the Wren is at David Whistlecrafts Norfolk woodland hide, I have been there to photograph the Crossbills and Siskins that come to his pool, more on that in the next post.

Another great thing about the winter is the influx of Short-eared Owls that arrive from Scandinavia and beyond, these are a joy to photograph usually. However this year I have been appalled by the behaviour of many of the 'birders with with cameras' that have literally crowded out some of the sites these birds depend on for winter survival, the constant noise of talking, slamming car doors, mobile phones and pagers is bad enough, but several of these idiots spend time hounding and chasing the birds in vain attempts to get close up images. The lack of fieldcraft, general stupidity, complete disregard for the birds welfare, and utter disrespect to other genuine and careful photographers is contemptable!

For just a few days each year the sun rises in a position that allows a clean unrestricted long telephoto lens shot of Ely Cathederal from far away, the longer the lens the bigger the sun will look, I used 840mm (600mm + 1.4X) to get this image.