Saturday 23 February 2013

Spring?… Well, not quite!

Beginning of the Week

A rare bout of wall to wall sunshine brought me out of the doldrums to see what wildlife was on offer.  An opportunity to photograph two birds in particular that have eluded my previous attempts – the Bullfinch and and the particularly pretty Long Tailed Tit – were too much to pass up.  The former seems to nowadays be rarer than I remember them to be during my childhood, where they seemed to be quite common.  The latter just seems to always stay hidden away. 

The bright, almost spring like sunshine helped bring the best out of the images with a fast shutter speed enabling me to ‘freeze’ them as they didn’t stay in any one spot for more than a second and I resorted to pre focusing on one spot where they would stop briefly.

SMP_9018
 
SMP_8874
 
SMP_8880
 
SMP_8909
 
SMP_8918
 
SMP_8927
 
SMP_8932
 
SMP_8966
 
SMP_8991
 
SMP_8996
 
SMP_9011

End of the Week

Within a week, winter had returned with a fall of snow blanketing Tyneside. Still, I can’t resist the temptation in going out in this kind of weather.

SMP_9029
 
SMP_9033
 
SMP_9042
 
SMP_9051
 
SMP_9088
 
SMP_9108
 
SMP_9167
 

SMP_9044

A post of mine wouldn’t be complete without some kind of rant at dog walkers.  A sign at the entrance of this nature reserve saying ‘dogs to be kept on lead’.  Of the dozen plus dog walkers I saw, only one had bothered to adhere to this rule.  kudos to that one individual. (not the individual in the picture who had just walked past that sign!)

2 comments:

  1. beautiful photographs of birds and landscapes. I particularly like the snowy bird pictures

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks. Hopefully the last of the Winter images for a while.

    ReplyDelete