Waxwings Everywhere !

Waxwings are now being reported in a number locations in Greater Manchester, Lancashire and North Wales areas, so camera at the ready it was off to Bolton to photograph again these great birds. Being fairly familiar with Bolton I had a good idea where the birds were located so I set off in confident mood

Arriving at the location I quickly spotted the birds sat in a tall tree which wasn't going to give great photo opportunities, the birds were flying to a nearby Rowan tree located in the rear courtyard of nearby social housing which the very kind residents let me use to photograph the birds, thank you all

Below is a selection of the bird images taken when the birds visited the outer branches of the Rowan thereby eliminating image clutter and utilising the blue sky as backdrop

Thanks for looking..

The background colour of the image above is a corrugated factor roof which contrasts well with the female blackbird

Mandarin's at The Ponds

Morning at Cannop Ponds, Forest of Dean, Glos to photograph the wild but resident Mandarin Ducks, the trick appears to be, feed the Mallards which then encourages the Mandarin's to come a little closer...

Morning Outing Before Barbara Turns Up

Brief morning outing to my local patch at Birtle before Storm Barbara turns up !...

Never Ending Fog !

Managed to get out to Pennington Flash today after a number of foggy days, 

A Break in the Weather

A break in the weather which turned out to be a fantastic day so it was off to Pennington Flash to see if I could nail the Bittern, sadly this didn't happen but here's some image's from this morning..

Winter Grebes

With a promising weather forecast this morning I set off for a couple of hours with the Great Crested Grebes at Elton. No sooner than I arrived the clouds rolled in and then it started to rain, not wanting to be put off and wasting the morning I carried on regardless

This is selection of shots in very poor light conditions.

Thanks for looking

Egyptian Grasshopper,

Here's an image from the summer of an Egyptian Grasshopper resting on the door handle of a hire car, it was taken on an iPhone in the Parque Regional de Las Salinas, San Pedro, Costa Blanca.

The image is cropped, but take it from me it was big at around 70mm. A good id characteristic is the vertical stripped eye

Garden, Dunnock