Birds Archives - Page 40 of 46 - Craig Rogers Photography

Not the Siskin shot I was after, but it was still good to be close up.

2nd April 20169th October 2017Craig Rogers

The light was great this afternoon, so I put up my popup hide close to one of the feeding areas I have in the garden in the hope that the pair of Siskins would visit. I saw them this morning at another feeding area I have.

The male did turn up, but very briefly and he flew straight to the Nyger Seed Feeder rather than going via one of the many perches I have setup.

I don’t normally take photos of birds on a feeder, but couldn’t resit this one.

{Click image for a higher resolution, click Flickr Link in caption to view photo on Flickr}

Siskin on the Nyger Seed Feeder - D810, AF-S 300mm f/2.8 @ 300mm, f/8, ISO500, 1/500sec - {Flickr Link}

The Goldfinches are having to share their Nyger seed!

29th March 20169th October 2017Craig Rogers

WARNING! Terrible quality photo, look away if you are offended!

This afternoon, I was running a cleaning procedure on my pond pumps which is about 4 metres from one of the bird feeding stations in the garden when I heard a bird call I didn’t recognise.

I look up and there is a pair (Male and Female) of Siskins looking to come down to the Nyger Feeder. It required a bit of a top up, so I grabbed some seed and topped it up. Of course, by now they had flown away, so I went back to the kitchen and waited.

Soon enough they came back to feed. It was raining at the time and as the kitchen window is around 25 metres away from the feeders I grabbed my D7100 (crop sensor for extra reach) and put my 500mm f/4 and 2x Teleconverter on to try and at least get a record shot.

Actually, it’s a terrible photo, but considering it’s a crop sensor at ISO4000 handheld at 1/125second through a window with it raining outside and with a 2x converter, I didn’t expect it to be this good!

Once the weather clears over the next few days, I’ll get out there in the hide and hopefully get a few snaps.

It’s the first time I’ve seen Siskins in the garden so pretty happy that more and more birds are visiting.

Starling Murmuration at Rocester, Staffordshire (Video)

25th March 20169th October 2017Craig Rogers

I live only a couple of miles from Rocester in Staffordshire, so imagine my surprise when the BBC Midlands Today News broadcast a live report from there about the Starling Murmuration last night.

So as the weather was great today (and I’ve just about recovered from Man Flu that has kept my down all week!) I went up at dusk to see what I could capture.

From some of the photos and videos I’ve seen, the numbers tonight seemed a little down on recent days, however, they still put on a good show.

Nobody really knows why Starlings perform these masterpiece flight shows but it is believed that “strength in numbers” is part of the game. I did see some Sparrow Hawks flying around at the same time.

By the time they started to show in big numbers the light had faded quite a bit and cloud had covered the horizon so no great sunset colours.

I didn’t manage to get many still shots as most of the action was taking place over houses and it was getting too dark to photograph, I switched to a longer lens to try and get inside the Murmuration and got some silhouette shots. I did set up my D7100 to film at the same time (video below).

{Click image for a higher resolution, click Flickr Link in caption to view photo on Flickr}

Inside the Murumuration - D810, AF-S 300mm f/2.8 @ 300mm, f/2.8, ISO2000, 1/1250sec - {Flickr Link}

Some Cleaned-up Shortie Photos

14th March 20169th October 2017Craig Rogers

I took a look at some of the distant photos of the brief showing of a Short Eared Owl from yesterday evening.

They are certainly not the best photos I’ve taken and they are heavily cropped, but some clean up work has made them worth sharing. This is the great thing about the Nikon D810, it’s high resolution and good quality pixels makes the cleaning up of photos much easier due to the great data it captures.

UPDATE: To see a step by step guide on how I cleaned-up these photos, please see my blog entry “Using Adobe Lightroom and DxO Optics Pro 10 to Edit An Almost Deleted Photo (Video)“.

{Click image for a higher resolution, click Flickr Link in caption to view photo on Flickr}

Short Eared Owl - D810, AF-S 500mm f/4 @ 500mm, f/8, ISO3600, 1/2000sec - {Flickr Link}

A very short appearance by a Short Eared Owl this afternoon

13th March 20169th October 2017Craig Rogers

I waited for an hour for one to take to appear, it did one lap of the field (unfortunately too far away from me) then landed in the long grass for 5 minutes before clearing off not to be seen again.

I did manage to get close enough to take a shot of it sitting in the grass.

{Click image for a higher resolution, click Flickr Link in caption to view photo on Flickr}

Short Eared Owl - D810, AF-S 500mm f/4 @ 500mm, f/5.6, ISO280, 1/400sec - {Flickr Link}

Nuthatch in the Golden Hour

13th March 20169th October 2017Craig Rogers

This morning the light mist was creating a nice golden glow just after sunrise.

There was a lot of activity with Sparrows and Blackbirds building nests. I also saw a Mistle Thrush in a neighbouring field so I’ll be keeping an eye out for them again (Story from last year).

A pair of Nuthatches were going up and down one of our Oak Trees, always amazes me how they can descend head-first down a tree.

Here’s a photo I managed to get of one of them.

{Click image for a higher resolution, click Flickr Link in caption to view photo on Flickr}

Nuthatch - D810, AF-S 300mm f/2.8 @ 300mm, f/8, ISO220, 1/320sec - {Flickr Link}

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