Emerging out of a Torpor.
18th February 2021
I thought it was about time I made an effort to overcome this bout of torpor I have been enduring. This horrible time we are living through has had a way of creeping up on me, and the old saying ‘The less you do, the less you want to do’ is very appropriate currently. I therefore decided to blow the cobwebs off my Canon 600 and try and find some images. Walking along the roads locally the trees are now laden with catkins predominately hazel and alder. The hazels are a greenish yellow but the alders are vivid purple which I find are far more photogenic. They tend to be much more colourful on the one side, I presume that’s the side that gets the most light. I jumped over my garden fence and walked down to a line of alders in my neighbour’s field and cut a number of small branch ends that were laden with catkins. I intended to use these cuttings as perches to photograph the garden birds we have been feeding throughout this winter.
I’m always chopping and changing the perches that we view from our bird hide which we built about ten years ago and I mentioned in a previous blog that I thinned out the tree canopy above these perches to allow much more light in, and indeed the photographic opportunities have been much improved. I constructed these perches so that there are no obstructions, like tree branches or hedge growth directly behind them, thereby avoiding the dreaded ‘Sphagetti Backgrounds ‘and therefore any background of the photographs hopefully is fairly smooth, and depending on the light on a given day is various shades of golden yellow and light green with only a few darkish shades of distant trees. These shades of colour are in fact my neighbour’s field which is barley stubble at the moment, which has been rendered buttery smooth by a big prime lens, (Canon ef600 f4), – it makes a huge difference!
The background of an image is as important as the subject itself and a cluttered background takes the viewer’s eye away from the important aspects of said image. In order to achieve any decent results I tied some small hollow metal tubes at various angles to the main supports of my perches with cable ties, and then inserted the alder catkin twigs into these hollow tubes. These tubes were cut from an old garden canvas chair which I knew would come in handy one day! This enables me to change the twigs at any time to freshen up any future images. There are about a hundred birds feeding regularly around the feeding stations in the garden - many Siskins, Goldfinches, Chaffinches, Robins, Blue Tits, Great Tits and Blackbirds, also a few Wren, Dunnock, Greenfinch, Coal Tit, Marsh Tit, Long Tailed Tit, House Sparrow, Song Thrush, Treecreeper and Nuthatch.
The main target for the alder catkin photographs were the small birds namely, Siskin, Blue Tit, Coal Tit and Goldfinch because of the delicate nature of the twigs. The twigs have to be placed in a particular way so the birds will perch on them to enhance the look of the image, it’s not easy and a few attempts were necessary because you don’t know which perch the birds will favour and how they want to land on that perch.
In the end I managed a few half decent shots of these four birds but I will continue to experiment after the forecasted bad weather has passed over this weekend – stay safe everyone!!
Blue Tit.
Coal Tit - very difficult to photograph - such a busy little bird.
Siskin.
Siskin.
Goldfinch.
Siskin
Long Tailed Tit - another very busy bird.
However, it's not all about good light because this very infrequent visitor
to the garden just dropped in last week during heavy rain. He stayed for
five minutes and then just disappeared - just lucky to be there at the time.
Male Brambling
I’m always chopping and changing the perches that we view from our bird hide which we built about ten years ago and I mentioned in a previous blog that I thinned out the tree canopy above these perches to allow much more light in, and indeed the photographic opportunities have been much improved. I constructed these perches so that there are no obstructions, like tree branches or hedge growth directly behind them, thereby avoiding the dreaded ‘Sphagetti Backgrounds ‘and therefore any background of the photographs hopefully is fairly smooth, and depending on the light on a given day is various shades of golden yellow and light green with only a few darkish shades of distant trees. These shades of colour are in fact my neighbour’s field which is barley stubble at the moment, which has been rendered buttery smooth by a big prime lens, (Canon ef600 f4), – it makes a huge difference!
The background of an image is as important as the subject itself and a cluttered background takes the viewer’s eye away from the important aspects of said image. In order to achieve any decent results I tied some small hollow metal tubes at various angles to the main supports of my perches with cable ties, and then inserted the alder catkin twigs into these hollow tubes. These tubes were cut from an old garden canvas chair which I knew would come in handy one day! This enables me to change the twigs at any time to freshen up any future images. There are about a hundred birds feeding regularly around the feeding stations in the garden - many Siskins, Goldfinches, Chaffinches, Robins, Blue Tits, Great Tits and Blackbirds, also a few Wren, Dunnock, Greenfinch, Coal Tit, Marsh Tit, Long Tailed Tit, House Sparrow, Song Thrush, Treecreeper and Nuthatch.
The main target for the alder catkin photographs were the small birds namely, Siskin, Blue Tit, Coal Tit and Goldfinch because of the delicate nature of the twigs. The twigs have to be placed in a particular way so the birds will perch on them to enhance the look of the image, it’s not easy and a few attempts were necessary because you don’t know which perch the birds will favour and how they want to land on that perch.
In the end I managed a few half decent shots of these four birds but I will continue to experiment after the forecasted bad weather has passed over this weekend – stay safe everyone!!
Blue Tit.
Coal Tit - very difficult to photograph - such a busy little bird.
Siskin.
Siskin.
Goldfinch.
Siskin
Long Tailed Tit - another very busy bird.
However, it's not all about good light because this very infrequent visitor
to the garden just dropped in last week during heavy rain. He stayed for
five minutes and then just disappeared - just lucky to be there at the time.
Male Brambling