Stithians Reservoir Bird Portraits

It was wet and windy here in Cornwall today but I went to Stithians Reservoir as planned looking for a recently seen small herd of Red Deer.

Well the deer either saw me coming or had headed off to greener pastures over night so I spent some time working with the mixed bag of small birds at Stithians southern cut-off hide and enjoyed the challenge of capturing portraits of fast and flighty subjects.

Young Blue tit

Young Greenfinch

Chiffchaff

Wren

Male Bullfinch

Female chaffinch

Male Chaffinch

Young Great tit

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

Great Spotted Woodpecker portraits

I returned to Stithians Southern Cut-off looking for more interaction shots between the male and female Great Spotted Woodpecker but I guess nobody told the female which failed to turn up.

The lively male however was on the case and chasing up and then reversing down in the reservoir bank woodland tree trunks creating some nice natural habitat feeding shots before heading into feeding station support frames and on to the feeders to top up on seeds and nuts

                            

Pair of Great Spotted Woodpecker

I visited Stithians Reservoir southern cut-off hide yesterday morning looking for some positive sightings of the local Great Spotted Woodpecker to start off my wildlife blog for 2019.

I was not to be disappointed with many sightings recorded during a five hour visit.  The female was first to show but was a little guarded as there were four birdwatchers in the hide two of which didn't seem capable of watching quietly but following what seemed like an eternity they eventually departed and the female woody gradually started to show better.

When the male first arrived there was a bit of a dispute going on between them over pecking order rights to the fat ball and peanut feeders which resulted in the female disappearing for a while but she eventually returned to produce a few nice pair portraits along with the male on a favoured moss covered perch point near the hide

It was good to be back behind the camera again  after my recent lay-off and I am looking forward to seeing what wildlife encounters will unfold in the oncoming year.

Little Grebes

Peter Tonkin and I returned to Stithians southern cut-off yesterday morning looking to capture images of a pair of Little Grebe predating on Palmate Newts as we had seen during last spring.

While the faithful Little Grebes were on show Newts were not on the menu yesterday and had been replaced by an abundance of Three Spine Sticklebacks which the grebes caught in large numbers.

Between bouts of feeding the grebes were relaxed and preening near the bank vegetation and the female was calling and displaying to the male to mate so all was looking well for them,

But the grebes didn't have things all to their own liking as a pair of Cormorant came in to fish for the same prey on several occasions sending the grebes into cover in the shallows perhaps if nothing else other than to avoid being on the much larger Cormorant menu themselves

Six of today's Great Spotted Woodpecker images

There is nothing that I love more than being able to spend many hours working with the same bird on any given day to study its behaviour and today proved to be one of them,  For some reason the female Great spotted Woodpecker at Stithians reservoir southern cut-off hide which normally makes a beeline for the nut or fatball feeders had changed tack today and spent several hours drilling and searching for bugs and grubs on the lichen and moss covered tree trunks and branches along the waterline, It was fascinating to watch this bird searching every nook and cranny along branches often hanging upside down by those large and powerful claws to cover the total area of any chosen tree limb and stopping from time to time to drill holes in the tree bark presumably to access hidden grubs who's presence it seemed to sense,  The lichen and moss coating that is a trademark of the Cornish landscape adds vibrant colour, interest and impact to these images and helped to create a very pleasant experience working with and indeed just watching this amazing bird's behaviour today.