It’s so beautiful when the morning light hits our patio and illuminates the box tree so brightly. It gives the perfect background for my bird pictures because it creates an irregular glowing green when it is out of focus. The telephoto lens then creates such beautiful bokeh effects.
This morning, a blue tit had taken up residence on the perch in front of the box tree in search of food and posed for a few portrait photos.
In the morning hours on our terrace. My view from the camouflage tent and only a short moment before the robin spotted me and flew away. It sat only about 2 meters away from me on an old garden chair and was set by the morning sun shining into the picture.
Once sitting portrait, quickly still change the side — »from which side I look better?« — and quickly up and away again. But I had my two pictures in the box!
It is always fascinating what I get in front of the lens in our garden. Blackbirds are not uncommon and I can always watch them pulling earthworms out of our lawn. But this evening it was something special. I was sitting on the patio in the camouflage tent when this blackbird rooster settled in the apple tree and let his song be heard. I took some photos at a distance of 5–6 meters and was later very surprised that while singing he was still carrying his hunting victim in his beak — a centipede!
I have never seen that before! And moreover in these details!
Shortly after I had seen the chaffinch on the tree and it had flown away, I could spot it at the edge of the path in the sprouting grass. The beautiful evening light shone in stripes across the path and the chaffinch could be seen again and again as if in a spotlight. A great play of light and shadow around the bird. Only in the viewfinder and thus looking through the long telephoto lens I could discover that he had seedlings in his beak again and again — the typical food of the chaffinch in this season.
So I followed the bird a little bit to take a whole series of nice shots. I show four more in a gallery afterwards: read more or write a comment …
I caught this chaffinch in the evening in the woods along the gravel road near our settlement. He sat next to me in the tree and seemed to enjoy the rays of the evening sun.
If you look closely, you can still see grains of sand at the front of the beak. At the end of March, when the first shoots came out of the ground, the chaffinches were there, feeding primarily on the young shoots. I could observe this for quite a while.
The bullfinches are rare guests in our garden. Once I had seen the female bullfinch first in the feeder and when I had the camera ready, she retreated to the lilac bush behind it to feed in peace on the sunflower seed. There I could then take my picture.
The Bullfinch male I had seen then some days later in the back of our garden. I was especially pleased that here in our natural garden the bird feasted on seeds from a plant that had been left standing! read more or write a comment …
In times of pandemic, the home garden must also be used for nature photography. We have a variety of garden birds around us, some also breed on our property and so it is always a pleasure when I get one of the birds in front of the lens from time to time.
Here it was the blue tit sitting in the rose branches and looking up to feed.