I hadn’t managed a decent image of a male Siskin yet but when I went out in to the garden this morning there were several in the old apple tree chattering away very loudly. In fact there was so much noise I went inside to grab some binoculars to have a look at what was making all the commotion. A quick look revealed a largish “charm” of Goldfinch and Siskin. We had already had a lone long Tailed Tit which is unusual and there had been the usual Blackcap, this time the hen.
I grabbed my camera and headed down into the lower hide to see if I could get a decent shot. It wasn’t long before one of the males came onto the sunflower hearts and I took the opportunity to take his picture. They are very active on the feeder and it wasn’t as easy as you might think to get a good sharp image with all the usual problems being confronted. Again light wasn’t too bad but I could have done with a much higher shutter speed to try and freeze the action. Then of course when you focus in close like this you have “depth of field” issues. But I like the shot above as it is a little bit unusual with him stretching his body like he is. The one below is a more familiar pose.

Thanks Johnathan (Roscoe) who took the time to e-mail me to say how much he liked yesterday’s Scaup photos. It is very nice to have positive and pleasant contact with people who like my images. Cheers…….. as we say in the UK. Incidentally 39 different countries have visited the blog in the past month or so which I think is absolutely amazing and most unexpected. I had no idea that so many people from all over the world were looking at my blog.