JCathcart, thank you for your kind words - I'm glad you like my photos

Like you, I'm also a Canon user - all of my 'wildlife' shots were taken on either a 7D or 7D Mk2, and mostly using a 100-400m lens that I use for airshow photography. However, 'it's not what you've got, it's how you use it' - so have fun experimenting and learning your craft!

NB/. Having a well stocked bird feeder close to the house is a great help .

Nice shot of the moon I've tried a few moon shots myself - I found that due to the moon's movement, an exposure slower than about 1/50th of a second resulted in a blurred image (so you may need to pump up the ISO to a fairly high figure.

Have fun

Excellent tip, thanks!

This fella likes a bath - he's so fat, he cracked the bowl





"Anyone seen my nuts? I'm sure I left some round here..."



"If the Blue Tits can do it, so can I!"


"Me to!!"


Portrait of a Wood Pigeon (aka 'The food monster')

Need to put that Pigeon on a Diet for sure. Gonna bust up your feeder to.

I like Eric's approach, taking striking shots of common birds that most photographers would ignore.

Thanks BD-123, I'm glad you like them

I had a 'visitor' of a different kind a few weeks ago .... The 'rozzers' did a series of low level circuits above my house in a shiny Eurocopter EC-145. Not sure if they were looking for me or the 'immigrant' parakeets that frequent my garden ...











"Maybe they won't see me below this tree ..."


"Damn, they've spotted me!"

Visitors this summer - the Great Spotted Woodpecker:




Note the lateral and rotational motion blur, the equivalent of ‘prop blur’ on propeller driven aircraft …




The prize:


Then he saw me and flew off:


I think this is a Mistle Thrush (rather than a Song Thrush), but please correct me if you know otherwise:






Juvenile BlueTit:


Male Robin:


Female Robin:

Ah! So that is what they are. We have had a few of those around the garden, I thought they were Twites......what a Twite I am.

I thought Robins were indistinguishable plumage wise between the sexes. A juvenile perhaps?

Great shots though. Our bird-feeder is bent at a precarious angle due to the woodies having a go.

Hi BD-123, you are correct about the Robins

After I posted these pictures I signed up to the RSPB forums and asked the experts for confirmation (my bird recognition skills are very basic compared to my aircraft recognition ones!). They said the same as you - that Robins are pretty much impossible to sex from their plumage - it's their behaviour that allows you to tell them a part. They confirmed the last two photos are of a juvenile Robin (but couldn't tell what gender).

They also confirmed that the Thrush is of the 'Mistle' rather than the 'Song' variety. There was a little bit of confusion caused by a misspelling of 'Mistle' - for a while we thought we'd identified a 'Missile' Thrush. No one was sure whether it was a BAe, MBDA or Raytheon variety ...