Waxwing!

Ok, it isn't a fresh one.  A year ago today one was kicking about in the middle of Norwich City Centre. It ate apples, waited for a bit, did a poo, waited a bit longer and then went back to the apples.  It was a grey Saturday afternoon, with a Premier League kick-off less than an hour away.  Funny looks were the order of the day.

My overlong experiment with high ISO was in full swing.  With the benefit of hindsight I can comfortably state that as far as the image quality went I stuffed it.  Nonetheless here is a photo of the bird that I still quite like.  Those branches were always in the way!

Waxwing = nice

Triskaidekaphobia

A highly significant gull

This one in fact.  

[I'm represented in this image by the looming foreground bulk - a rare self taken photo image (there must be a better name for that kind of thing)]

'So what?' you might say, 'getting close to gulls isn't that hard or exciting' and you would (in my world anyway) be completely wrong.  You see this particular gull is good for the following reasons.  It is a Med, I could get close and it can be seen from the ring road in Norwich.  

Most significantly of all - I now have Meditteranean Gull on my Norwich List.  

I took more photos.

.

There was a Common Gull or two.  They are already on the list.

More gull photos here.

Back on the Black

First Black Redstart of the year is back in the patch, and what a cracker he is!  Bit distant for a decent shot so a heavy crop, but this will change as the season progresses.

Plenty more Black Redstart photos by clicking on these words...

Got a photo in the paper

In the Eastern Evening News on Monday.

Always been my most favourite regional evening Newspaper...

Doesn't look quite as nice as it does on the screen though!

Juvenile Black Redstart

Looking forward to the return of the Black Redstarts to my patch.  Here is a juvenile from last year.

Snow Bunting

My lunchtime treat at the moment is half a dozen Snow Buntings. Especially when the Sun comes out...

Resolution, or lack of it perhaps.

I considered doing one of those photo-a-day type resolutions for 2015, but then realised that I'd missed about half of January and the impetus was kind of lost on that one. So I've gone for photo-a-bit-more-often-than-last-year, which is a bit more realistic.

So in the spirit of my half-hearted resolution, here is a photo!!  I've taken a fair few photos of this bird in 2014, but a recent sunrise was too hard to resist.  The background colour is pretty much as shot.

Not-spot birding

Over the festive period I had the rare privilege of being off -grid  most of the time.   No phone signal, no wifi, no interweb, nothing.  Try it, you might like it.

That will be Devon then

On the first day I found that there were birds kicking about outside the window.  Three of them were Bullfinches, and two of them male.  Here is a snatched shot through the window.

As I was going to be there for a while, and I assumed that the Bullfinches would be too, I put some food out.  The Bullfinches were not seen again.  But other birds enjoyed the food, and I enjoyed them.

Nuthatch...

...Chaffinch...

...Robin, well it was Christmas...

...Bluey...

...Coalie...

...Greatie...

...Marshie...

...oh, and a Peacock.  They like fatballs.

Black Redstarts again...

 While I'm talking about Black Redstarts (which I was but AGES ago), here are a few more from 2014.  Three from the summer, and one from the autumn.

And if you like photographs of Black Redstarts there are plenty more on this page of my website