Close Up Portraits Today

With continued poor weather condition again today I headed for some cover at Stithians Southern Cut-off Hide and came away with a good selection of portraits that are posted below.


Female Great Spotted Woodpecker

A trio of busy Long Tailed Tits

A Robin

Male Bullfinch

Gold Crest

A Green finch

A Male Reed Bunting

A Magpie

Hoping to get back on to the Short Eared Owls tomorrow with better weather forecast !

Woodpeckers in flight and foraging

It was good to watch the female great Spotted Woodpecker shown above foraging for grubs under the bark of Stithians woodland trees and below you can see the movement of her head as she hammers into another trunk to start lifting more moss covered bark.

 

The Woodpecker decides to top up its natural foraging with a few peanuts from the feeder and here I have merged the first two flight shots to the third to show a montage of its movement.

Below: Not for the first time I once again witnessed a woody suddenly taking an unexpected nap directly after a good feed,  On this occasion it happened twice,  Once for fifteen minutes without any movement with its eyes closed on a favoured viewing perch which would seem appropriate but the second happened as it was climbing vertically midway up the feeder frame for about four minutes before it aborted the visit and flew off.

On one occasion in my garden a year or two back I watched this Woody Cat-napping habit occur on my garden fence for over twenty minutes and I was able to  walk within touching distance of the bird before it awoke to make a hasty departure !

Brief Encounter

The Great Spotted Woodpeckers were slow to show at Stithians Southern Cut-off yesterday morning but we did get a few shots of a very brief drumming and a flight shot just before leaving.

Stithians Southern Cut-off yesterday

 A visit to Stithians Southern cut-off hide to duck out of the wind and rain proved to be Quite a productive morning with all the usual birds making a good show around the feeding station.

I was working with my new Nikon D500 DX camera body looking to obtain full frame portraits of small birds in the low light levels that were prevailing at the time so it was a bit of a challenge for the camera.

I was using my 500mm F4 lens with a 1.7 Tele-converter fitted which on the DX D500 body gave me a reach of 1275mm and I was pleased with the close-focus Portraits posted below and the cameras low light performance while working on ISO 6400

A recent visit to Stithians Reservoir

Peter Tonkin and I revisited Stithians Stuart Hutchings and  Southern cut-off hide last week to check if the Great Spotted Woodpecker fledglings were still working the area,  We only saw one bird but it looked to be doing very well and it was interesting to note that its juvenile red cap was beginning to fade out.

Water levels were expectantly low and all vegetation around the hide high but we enjoyed our visit while snapping away at the images posted below.

This juvenile Grey Heron appeared to be displaying but we could not see any other Heron in the area.

We were seasonally surprised to note several Lapwing working the margins

There were around a dozen mature Cormorants occupying all of the large rocks around the water margins of the main reservoir.

And five or six juvenile Grey Heron resting up between bouts of fishing the margins

Back on the cut-off the displaying Grey Heron eventually took to fishing the margins amid masses of flowering water plants before flying off to join the heron on the main reservoir

Great Spotted Woodpecker - Juvenile feeding behaviour

I found watching Great Spotted Woodpecker feeding their young quite fascinating for as they return to feed them the adult birds go straight on the defensive to outwit the sharp forward jabbing beak of the inexperienced juveniles

In the shot above the male flies in towards a perched Juvenile from a higher level and you might think as I did that this looks like an idea head to head location for feeding !

Not so !  On landing he immediately starts to lower his posture looking to place the sawn-off tree stump between them.

The juvenile gets impatient but lowers itself as well.

But when it tries to lunge again to grab the food it finds the stump in the way and the adult is still in control of the food..

The youngster tries a quick sideways move to come around the stump.

But the adult is quicker and moves down and then around the stump.

 When the juvenile catches up on his side of the stump the adult is already reaching out to safely deliver the food.

So the juvenile has had his first lesson in manners and been feed.  The male woodpecker now flies off to collect more food while the juvenile waits a little more patiently in the same location.