BINGO !

I went for my afternoon walk hoping to find something to photograph and BINGO I saw the great grey shrike much closer than I had seen it before. It seemed a bit agitated and I soon saw why.

 Sitting much closer to me was another and as they are very territorial and don't like each others company it quickly left leaving me to enjoy the other one.

As I wandered back to the car I came across this stonechat enjoying the late afternoon sun.

Old faithfuls

 Still having a lot of trouble finding interesting wildlife to photograph. Nothing is happening in my garden during daylight hours, no birds on my feeders, except the occasional wood pigeon. I do have a couple of local spots that have been good to me in the past but over the last few months they have produced little.
But after dark my garden comes to life. Beside the bats that are often seen in the warmer evenings the hedgehog visits for his supper of meal worms and the fox comes round for his peanuts and grapes.
I've had little success photographing the bats, but with a bit of luck in the Spring who knows?

You eat your meal worms son and I will keep a look out.

Great grey shrike

Almost 80 years old and I see my first great grey shrike. I've been looking for owls for the past few months with little success or in fact anything else of interest when this evening when a group of twitchers  turned up complete with scopes and within a few moments spotted this bird about 150m away. With the fading light I didn't have much time and out of a dozen or so shots this one was the best. Within minutes it had disappeared into the gloom.

Shovellers

 For the past few months I have spent an hour or two each day looking for some sort of wildlife to photograph. As you can see I haven't had much luck. Just a few old faithfuls on a local pond that have been keeping my interests alive. The light wasn't good this afternoon and I struggled to get some decent shots.

This is a shoveller doing what he is best at, shovelling.