European Greenfinch (Chloris Chloris)

Cambridgeshire July 2019

Nikon D7200, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6

f/6.3, 1/1000s, ISO 500, 500mm

After having a chat with @AchtungDrempels about Greenfinches, I trawled through my catalogue to see if I actually had any photos of one. It turns out I have four, which is remiss of me as they are beautiful birds.

In Greek mythology Chloris was a nymph associated with spring, flowers and new growth, it comes from the Greek word Khloros, meaning pale green. All of which seem apt for a green bird that I find mostly in woodlands and hedgerows.

They eat a wide range of fruits, seeds, flowers and some invertebrates, and I found this one on a bramble bush eating its flowers.

Hi

I'm seeing posts I have deleted appearing in my profile. Is there a way of hiding them if they can't be actually hard deleted?

Love the app by the way 👍

Male Eurasian Chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs)

Rutland Nature Reserve, November 2019.

Nikon D7200, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6

f6.3, 1/40s, ISO 500, 380mm

Chaffinches are one of the most common UK small birds, but ones that don't visit my garden. So, I am always happy to have a chance to see them when I'm out and about and will always try and take a shot if an opportunity presents itself.

This one was a tricky task as sunset in mid-November in this part of the UK is 4:15pm, and it was already 4:30pm when I found the birds.

There was still a trickle of light left in the sky, cutting through the dense but almost bare trees as the birds prepared to roost.

I quickly realised I could either push the ISO to a point where the noise would really spoil the shot or attempt to shoot at a shutter speed well below the recommended 1/focal length for a long lense and ruin it with camera shake instead.

I shortened the lens to 380mm, braced myself against a tree as firmly as I could and wound the shutter speed down, watching the exposure needle creep towards the middle of the scale. Click...click...two shots and he was gone.

I looked at the exif data on the camera and saw 1/40s. I thought, that's probably the slowest shutter speed I have ever shot with this lens. And it was, until 10 seconds later when I got a lovely shot of a Dunnock at 1/30s.

You've gotta love image stabilisation!

Male Eurasian Chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs)

Rutland Nature Reserve, November 2019.

Nikon D7200, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6

f6.3, 1/40s, ISO 500, 380mm

Chaffinches are one of the most common UK small birds, but ones that don't visit my garden. So, I am always happy to have a chance to see them when I'm out and about and will always try and take a shot if an opportunity presents itself.

This one was a tricky task as sunset in mid-November in this part of the UK is 4:15pm, and it was already 4:30pm when I found the birds.

There was still a trickle of light left in the sky, cutting through the dense but almost bare trees as the birds prepared to roost.

I quickly realised I could either push the ISO to a point where the noise would really spoil the shot or attempt to shoot at a shutter speed well below the recommended 1/focal length for a long lense and ruin it with camera shake instead.

I shortened the lens to 380mm, braced myself against a tree as firmly as I could and wound the shutter speed down, watching the exposure needle creep towards the middle of the scale. Click...click...two shots and he was gone.

I looked at the exif data on the camera and saw 1/40s. I thought, that's probably the slowest shutter speed I have ever shot with this lens. And it was, until 10 seconds later when I got a lovely shot of a Dunnock at 1/30s.

You've gotta love image stabilisation!

I've just noticed all my photos, and many from other members of this community, are no longer visible. I use Boost for most of my browsing, but it's the same on the website. I've posted on a support thread that another user raised about the same issue.

https://lemmy.world/comment/8247921

If your photos are missing as well it might be worth adding a comment for visibility.

Great Spotted Woodpecker (Dendrocopos Major)

West Coast of Scotland, August 2022

Nikon D850, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6

f/6.3, 1/320s, ISO 2500, 480mm

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with woodpeckers. After many years of photography, I still find it incredibly difficult to get a good shot of them.

i) I find them very flighty, so I end up a long way from them. I don't like to disturb birds if at all possible.

Secondly, they are often far up a tree. This creates an angle for the image that is less than ideal.

And C, they are often in deep shade, making the shooting conditions very challenging.

I have many photos of poorly exposed black and white blobs, covered by leaves and branches, and if I am lucky, a splotch of red.

In this case, we had hired a bird hide from the National Trust for Scotland for the afternoon/evening, about a £20 donation, which is well worth it just to escape from the midges. What I was really hoping to see was a Pine Marten, so I wasn't too concerned about the light for photography; I just wanted to see one.

As it turned out, the viewing point was surrounded by a dense tree canopy at the base of a very steep hill, if not a mountain. It was also 5:30 pm in August in Scotland, and therefore overcast and raining (love you guys!). And someone had forgotten to tell the Pine Marten that I had paid good money for an appearance!

In the end, I had to settle for some of the best views of Red Squirrel and Woodpecker that I have ever had, so I forced myself to take some pictures - the hardship!

Actually, the photography conditions were pretty brutal. I leaned heavily into the lens stabilization, shooting handheld and well under 1/focal length, and pushing the ISO into the mid-2000s.

I had my tripod but found the space and viewing angles too restrictive. The D850 did a great job of noise control, certainly better than my D7200 could have managed, and I could have doubled the ISO without too many problems.

I should also have used the lens wide open at f/5.6, but it's become a habit to stop it down to f/6.3, where it is noticeably sharper.

The result? I was still two stops underexposed when I came to process it. Lightroom to the rescue!

I do find it worth reviewing what I did when I get into this situation, trying not to be too judgmental with perfect hindsight, but learning whatever lessons can be learned.

In the end, this is probably the best photo I have of a woodpecker, so no real complaints, and I actually rather like the more subdued lighting.

It's a reminder of the reality of a fantastic day.

Razorbill (Alca torda)

Bempton Cliffs, East Yorkshire, UK, May 2019.

Nikon D7200, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6

f/6.3, 1/800s, ISO 500, 420mm

f/6.3, 1/400s, ISO 500, 480mm

f/6.3, 1/1600s, ISO 800, 380mm

f/6.3, 1/2000s, ISO 800, 500mm

f/6.3, 1/640s, ISO 500, 420mm

Razorbills are truly fasinating birds and I think one of the most handsome. Their contrasting colouration and their bright yellow mouths and strong bills give them a really distinctive look.

They are member of the Auk family and are also known as the Razor-billed Auk, or Lesser Auk. Their closest relative is the now sadly exitinct Great Auk.

Like the other members of the Auk family, they spend most of their time out at sea, coming back to land for the breeding season. If you are ever lucky enough to watch them underwater you will see them using their wings as propulsion, in the same manner as a penguin.

Razorbills can be found around the coastlines of the North Atlantic and they generally live in large colonies. The Razorbill chooses only one partner for life and they only have one chick per year. They also don't start to breed until they are at least 3 years old and sometimes not until they are 5. They can also skip a breeding season as they get older. All this makes them very vulnerable to population decline.

I took these pictures at Bempton Cliffs on the East Yorkshire coast. Bempton and the surrounding Flamborough Head host England's largest onshore seabird breeding colonies, many species and over 300,000 birds. There can be as many as 20,000 pairs of Razorbills during the breeding season making it one of their largest colonies in the world.

From a photography stand point they can be a bit tricky. Like any black and white bird getting good exposure is always going to be a compromise. It is also difficult to get their eyes to standout from the surrounding feathers. However, they do seem to like to pose, they often display engrossing behaviours, and that yellow mouth makes an amazing contrast to the black head.

Cormorant(Phalacrocorax carbo) vs European eel (Anguilla anguilla)

Nikon D7200, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6

f/6.3, 1/2000s, ISO 500, 500mm

River Great Ouse, Camrbridgeshire, May 2019

This was another of those "right place, right time" situations. I walked a few miles to this spot on the river and was a little disappointed to see nothing on the water. I was about to head further down stream when this cormorant suddenly appeared. It had obviously been hunting in the rough waters of the weir and I hadn't noticed it.

Cormorants are sea birds, but in reality we get them in inland lakes and rivers almost all year round in the UK.

I took a couple of shots of the bird and then it disappeared again, surfacing only moments later with this frankly huge eel.

The European Eel is born in the Sargasso sea, a region of the North Atlantic ocean. It then migrates over the course of 300 days as a tiny larvae to the coasts of Europe .

When they reach the coast the larvae turn into tiny eels, which then move into a river. In the river they grow to adult size, taking anywhere up to 20 years, and then they head out to the Sargasso sea to breed and die.

In the UK a big eel is 5lb, though they can reach twice that, especially if they get trapped in a lake and can't return to breed. This was a big eel!

I watched the battle for about 15 minutes. The cormorant lost the eel a couple of times during the fight, but I suspect the initial attack had injured the fish, making its demise inevitable.

Avocet (Recurvirostra avosetta)

Nikon D7200, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6

f/6.3, 1/500s, ISO 500, 500mm Norfolk May 2019

f/6.3, 1/1600s, ISO 400, 500mm

This is the species that got me into bird watching. Over 40 years ago a teacher at my primary school was a member of the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) and told us stories, including the one about the symbol of the RSBP, the Avocet. A bird that was practically extinct in the UK by the 1940's.

At this point (early 80's) it was recovering but still a rare sight in the UK.

Fast forward a few decades and I had the pleasure of seeing hundreds of these birds for the first time on the North Norfolk coast. No longer rare, they are a UK conservation success story and one that I have been glad to be able to photograph.

Great Tit (Parus major)

Nikon D7200, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6

f/6.3, 1/500s, ISO 500, 500mm Cambridgeshire 2019

The largest Tit species found in the UK, its range covers almost the whole of the mainland, apart from the highest parts of the the Scottish highlands.

It can be a bit of a bully and I see it on our bird feeders pushing off other species including Starlings, which takes some doing!

It has a distinctive call that sounds very much like Teacher! Teacher!

A young couple in love, watching the world walk by.

Portugal 2019

Northern Wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe)

Nikon D7200, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6

f/6.3, 1/500s, ISO 500, 480mm

Orkney 2016

Male

Nikon D7200, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6

f/5.6, 1/800s, ISO 500, 350mm

Mull 2017

Female

Nikon D850, Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6

f/6.3, 1/500s, ISO 500, 480mm

Isle of Lewis 2023

Male

Another absolute favourite bird that I only get to see when my travels take me to Scotland and the North of England. You can find them in Wales and in the South-West but I haven't seen them there. You will also need to be in the right location -moorland and heathland - and the correct time of year as the migrate to the UK in early March and leave back for Africa in October.