I don't think I've photographed a Sparrow Hawk before, although I have seen them in the garden and elsewhere - but never with a camera close enough. I was delighted to have spotted the bird of prey and satisfied enough with the technical capture to post a few images here. Photographs were taken 29 January.
I was intrigued by the different amount of frost appearing on the separate pieces of wood on the table top.
Thankfully during the week there aren't so many folk walking on the tow path and I enjoyed watching this female Blackbird finding food. The clouds caught my attention too and the first image suggests two layers of different cloud formation.
Although they may not have actually bred in the garden last year, there were a couple of young which came to feed with parents. Yesterday I saw two Jays but they weren't photographable together. I have no idea how to tell them apart other than to say one of them can hold a lot of peanuts in its mouth at any one time! Its crop appears to have even more peanuts than could be seen in the mouth. The first image is a different Jay from the lower two photographs of the same bird, with all the nuts.
This image is rather small but there is a ferry between the land masses and on the horizon making its way to Stornoway I would imagine. That is where we were heading anyway. I'm particularly fond of this photograph because the sea is calm, we'd boarded quite early in the morning so the light was changing constantly, and I took a lot of photographs: I hadn't been to the Outer Hebrides before. Mostly I was taking seascapes but occasionally there was birdlife and marine mammals but nothing close enough to photograph with conviction. Another time!
A couple of years ago I had two Swift nesting boxes attached to the chimney on this bungalow. Even though Swifts prefer a higher nesting site with plenty of space in front of the boxes, the likelihood of them choosing these boxes wasn't high! However, at the end of the breeding season last year a few Swifts started to show interest in the boxes - which delighted me hugely. Here is evidence of their interest! And later this year.........?
This is another of those images which I took last year because it's in the garden! This rose has been flowering generously over many years now, and I think it must be about 26 years since I bought it (or perhaps given it by my mother - she was like that!) when she and I visited Hyde Hall RHS garden in Essex. It is a garden I should love to visit again, but will have to wait until such a trip is allowed once more.
I was thrilled when a friend living in Ely alerted me to the first Peregrine Falcon family breeding on the top of Ely Cathedral. I shot up there early the following morning and had a wonderful time photographing up to four Peregrines in one frame. All three juveniles were with a parent bird and practising their flying antics. Not appearing on the Calendar, but which could have done, was the sight of a Wood Pigeon getting out of the way of Peregrine on the ramparts on the Octagon just in time! I have another friend who updates me on Peregrine activity around the Cathedral and it does look as though at least one Peregrine is wintering in the area.
I have to say one of my favourite blossoms has to be Apple Blossom. There are several Apple Trees in the garden so difficult to decide which one to include. On the whole Calendar this is one of the few images which was taken during 2020.
On the evening we arrived in Iceland in February 2014 we were greeted by the most spectacular display of the Aurora Borealis I could have imagined. We tooks photographs for a full three hours (while taking snatches of our delicious evening meal) and saw the full range of colours of an aurora. The green is produced by oxygen particles about 60 miles from the earth, and the rarer red auroras are produced by high-altitude oxygen at heights up to 200 miles. It was a display without comparator.
This photograph was taken when I visited Iceland in February 2014 and we stayed in a hotel near Lake Myvatn (meaning 'midge lake'). The Lake is shallow (between 9' and 15'), just 912 feet above sea level, 'a geological paradise' and has clusters of pseudocraters. We saw Barrow's Goldeneye, Snow Buntings, Gyrfalcon and Icelandic Horses near where we were staying. I love the minimalist colour palette and the changing light across wide expanses.
Although I'm getting out most days to walk, I'm not finding that many photographs 'calling' me. Instead, I'll post each month's calendar photograph for this year and will start with the cover image. I took this photograph in 2018 when driving back to Wasdale and the light was just beginning to go show it was in the autumn and towards the end of the day. Normally I've used images taken in the previous year, but 2020 was different. I've been putting photographs from trips/holidays into published books so have taken some favourites from those books for 2021's Calendar
