Big Visitor !

I still feed the bird feeders and try to notice what comes into the garden. There is a seasonal variation to what can be found in our quite little garden. Last week we had a real treat.

I have a rubbish little digital camera and I have to work with its limitations. So, when a majestic buzzard came into the garden, I was keen to get a photo if it without spooking it. (For the folks in the US, a Buzzard Buteo buteo in the UK is a very large hawk and not a vulture.)The bird was seen three separate times last week sitting on a rock at the edge of our frog pond. We have a number of them living and breeding near our house. I quite often hear them screaming. I'll look up and way above me will be a couple of them circling. In the late summer there will be entire families of buzzards soaring above the fields. This is the first time I have ever seen one get this close to the house. Naturally the photo is blurry and you can barely make out that there is something in the centre of this picture. I tried blowing the photo up and using digital photo editing, sharpen the edges. This is as good as the photo got. Certainly the mole hills that are peppering the front lawn are plainly visible. *sigh*

I have a spotting scope that is almost permanently set up in the front room with the lens focused on the bird table. One can see the songbirds and occasional great spotted woodpecker in lovely sharp focus. Knowing that digiscopes are just spotting scopes manufactured so that a digital camera can be attached I tried sticking the lens of my battered camera up to the eyepiece of the spotting scope and took a few photos. It's tricky to get it angled right among other things.

Here are a few of my first efforts. I think if I stick with it, I could get better at getting in-focus photos of the birds that come for a visit and a snack. Coal tit - looks like a North American Chickadee but has that big white spot on the back of his head. Greenfinch Great tit with a male chaffinch off to the right.Female chaffinch