Luck and an experiment

 N/NW towards St Flovier

Last day of February; we have some sun and it's pretty cold. There's quite a nasty N wind coming over Eric's field. When I had a wander round earlier it made my eyes water. I took a couple of photos simply because the sun was out and it wasn't grey any more!

looking SE/S towards Limeray

As always, taking decent wildlife photos presents a real challenge and it's one both of us fail to meet most of the time! It requires endless patience and a real dose of luck--being in the right place at the right time with your camera. We have been lucky enough to have been in the right place at the right time but mostly sans camera. Photos of flowers and plants is fine; buildings even better. Photos of deer which arrive in poor light and are at least 50 - 75m away = much much less fine. Last time we mentioned chevreuil we used a stock photo so we thought it was about time we offered some proof! 

chevreuil v early one morning

We've been seeing them quite regularly. There's always 3, two hinds and a juvenile buck. They nibble our grass as they amble past. One of the 3 stopped long enough early one morning late last week for Niall to go and find the camera and grab a fast photo. Apologies for the poor quality--we've tidied it up as best we could.

Our feeder remains constantly busy; the blue tits squabble with the single willow tit. The great tits muscle out the blue tits until they come back mob-handed.  On a little rise we've strewn seed and this is the domain of the chaff and green finches. We've had a visit from a solitary gold finch but he didn't want his photo taken alas.

great tits, blue tits and 1 greenfinch

However, there is one greenfinch who likes coming to the feeder and despite the fact that he's a bit hopeless at hanging on he persists. So in order to to try and get a photo of him I untertook at bit of an experiment. I have a very nice pair of Minolta Activa 10 x 25 binoculars. So holding the binoculars in one hand and the camera in the other I brought the camera right up to one of the lenses and pointed both at the feeder. It took a fair bit of patience and a bit of trial and error. The end result may not be brilliant but it did work after a fashion... You can see the greenfinch on the right waiting to get onto the feeder.