Today has been a good one in the garden for Tit species. I decided to take some experimental photos using a 200mm lens that came with my first camera and am pleased to say that it worked quite well, the final results are a little on the “soft” side as you would expect from a very cheap lens but the principle worked well. I have ordered a high quality 200 mm lens which will be with me tomorrow. This should improve the images taken in my garden even more. I am looking forward to using it. In the meantime I have posted these two images so that we can compare them when I post images with the new lens in the near future. These birds are both juveniles, the first is a Blue Tit and the second a Great. As I sat in the hide waiting I got very excited because I could hear Long Tailed Tits in the apple tree and I was really hoping that one at least would come down on to the feeders and present its self for a photo…………………………………………………. but no luck and eventually they left the garden. I note that this time last year I had Long Tails in the garden so I can see a pattern there.
Later on in the early evening the weather cleared and the sun shone so I decided at the last minute to go out to the moor to continue my Cuckoo study. I heard at least 5 different males calling but didn’t have the look of one visiting the tree which I had decided to concentrate on.
I did waste a little bit of time though pursuing a pair of Whinchats, the second sighting this year……. and well, you can’t resist that can you. I noticed that there was a true pair and it might just be that I have never actually seen a male in true breeding plumage before. As I arrived at the cuckoo tree there he was right at the top and I tried to get as close as I could to him. After a while he flew back over my head to his mate and it gave me the chance to study them both together and note how much more brightly coloured the male is. As I sat in the hide some 30 minutes later he came back on to the top of the tree and I was waiting for him to turn his head in a good photographic pose but unforunately he never did and I cursed as he flew off knowing that I had missed a really good photo opportunity.