Blackbird V Woodpecker

While waiting to capture Great Spotted Woodpecker landing and take-off at Stithians southern cut-off today I witnessed a territorial dispute between a male Woodpecker and a male Blackbird.

I would not have expected a blackbird to be of any threat to a woodpecker so I was a bit surprised when the sequence of events posted below were recorded.

The blackbird was incensed when the woodpecker threatened it and stood its ground for a few seconds but then took off and I thought that would be the end of it.

But this clever blackbird circled around behind the woodpecker and relaunched its attack in flight while out of reach from the woodpeckers powerful dagger like beak,   It then returned to its original location ready to stand its ground again

The Woodpecker seemed as surprised as I was at the feisty blackbirds stand but decided to exit the location in a sideways take-off and perhaps come back another time.

There is perhaps surprisingly not much in it when you weigh up the size and weight difference between these two birds but this particular wise old blackbird is probably used to fighting for its territory with all the other local male blackbirds on a daily basis.  

                                               Blackbird 1   V   Woodpecker 0

Woodpecker Landing and Take-off

                                                                 Greater Spotted Woodpecker Landing

Greater Spotted Woodpecker Take-off

The Greater Spotted Woodpecker is a fast, efficient and quick witted predator,  If you watch one for a while you will start to realise how difficult it is to first judge the moment of their take-off and secondly to track them to their choice of landing places.

Wildlife photographers love to take on the challenge of capturing these moments in time and the key to success is in studying your subject to enable you to detect the action points when they re-occur and then to build up a  ' Tricks of the trade '    list of resolutions that helps you overcome the problems that each subject throws up that might stop you capturing the moment

Spring Colours Count

In the Spring time its the colours that count when male birds are looking for a mate,   At Stitians southern cut-off this morning all of the males were sporting their finest plumage and it seems to be working for the male Great Spotted Woodpecker on the right in the image above as a female moves in to take a closer look !!

This is a great time of the year to capture images of many species of birds at Stithians some of which are shown in the portfolio posted below.

Stithians southern cut off today

It was a fine morning here in Cornwall and My day started early with a dozen or so Roe Deer images taken before sunrise using the Nikon D5's Auto ISO set to a maximum of 51,000, The light levels were as such that  I could not see these deer without looking through the viewfinder but the cameras AF system focused and tracked them and exposed the image at maximum aperture of F4 and 1/200th of a second,  It sees things a lot better than I can!!

I went home for breakfast and then straight on to Stithians southern cut-off where I played around with various new AF settings and a 1.7 converter that extended the focal length of my lens to 850mm I worked on many of the local birds that are regularly attracted to the feeders and the images below represent a fair portion of them,  No exotic Sparrowhawks or Otters today But with a good forecast I will be back to try my luck again tomorrow,  Its a tough life But some ones got to do it.!!