FieldfareCam

Here is another new species for my trail camera.  These pictures were recorded in my mother's garden in Northamptonshire.  We had noticed a fieldfare eating fallen apples and set up a camera to get a closer look.  The camera is a Wingscapes BirdCam Pro which records HD video and can take 20MP jpg stills although these photos are frame grabs from the videos.  The quality is reasonable.

Here are a couple of videos.  Again the quality is reasonably good, perhaps better in softer light than bright sunlight. The camera has an adjustable preset focus and the depth of field seems narrow, even in good light.

Bird of the week - Goldeneye

This beautiful duck is a winter visitor from Scandinavia.  Several of them can be found on Killingworth Lake, about two miles from here.  They usually stay a bit out of reach of the camera in the middle of the water but the recent cold weather froze much of the lake and they were forced a bit closer.  These photos were taken between sleet showers so the light was pretty poor.  In good light the drake's head is a wonderful iridescent green.  Here he is black and white - with a golden eye.

As with most ducks, the female has more restrained colouring and she also has a paler eye.

Courtship begins in earnest when they get back to their breeding grounds but that didn't stop the males from displaying to the females by swimming alongside and stretching their necks

or throwing their heads back.

This female is unimpressed.

Goldeneyes are diving ducks, eating mostly insects and crustaceans.  We do see a few in Gosforth Park nature reserve, usually at the far side of the lake.  While I was watching them the goldeneyes occasionally took off and flew a couple of circuits around the lake before landing again.  They make a wonderful whistling sound as they fly.

Goldeneyes (Bucephala clangula) nest in holes in trees and will use nest boxes.  A few have been persuaded to nest in Scotland.

Most go back farther north (orange = breeding range, blue = wintering range).

commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bucephala_clangula_map.svg

Thomas Bewick made this engraving for A History of British Birds.

Archibald Thorburn painted goldeneyes with scaups and smews,

and with tufted ducks.

John James Audubon made this painting for Birds of America.

The goldeneye is not to be confused with GoldenEye, the 17th James Bond film, released in 1995 and starring Pierce Brosnan as Bond.  Operation Goldeneye was a WW2 plan to thwart possible radar surveillance of the Straits of Gibraltar by the Axis powers in collaboration with fascist Spain, and was run by Commander Ian Fleming.  Fleming later named his Jamaican estate Goldeneye and wrote the early James Bond novels there.

You can listen to the goldeneye's whistling wingbeats here.  Watch a video of the courtship display here.  And listen to Bill Oddie's BBC Radio 4 Tweet of the Day here.

In the limelight

Yesterday Alan the electrician put up new LED security lights around the house, including a very bright one outside the back door.  The foxes were wary at first, presumably because it was something new, but that didn't stop them coming for the food. There is now enough light for still photos (fairly "soft" because of settings of 1/100s, f/2.8, ISO 12,800) whereas before I had to take frame grabs from video.  Here are the results from last night.

Instagram

I am probably a bit old for this but I now have an Instagram account.  I started on 1st January after pressure from my niece Rebecca and my young friends Naomi, Alice & Lucy.  Although I enjoy the process of taking photos the main satisfaction is from sharing them and this is a great way of sharing photos with a new and younger audience.  All the photos on this blog and on Facebook and Flickr are contemporary.  Instagram gives me the opportunity of posting older photos but I shall keep them appropriate to the time of year (so no dragonflies in winter, etc).  At present I am posting one photo a day.  If you do Instagram too you can find me at trogtrogphoto.

Foxes in the snow

We had a bit of snow on Friday night but this is the first opportunity I have had to post a few photos.  I had already put out the peanuts before the snow fell but the foxes had no trouble finding them.  The first one turned up on his own.

Here is a short video.

About an hour later a pair turned up.  It was fascinating to watch them sniffing out peanuts one at a time from under the snow.

Another short video.

Bird of the week - Barn owl

I have had a wonderful time watching a pair of barn owls this week.  The pictures above and below were almost the last ones I took on the first visit.  Most of the time the owls were slightly too far away so the flight photos below are fairly heavily cropped.  Then just as the sun was setting one owl landed on a fence post near the road so I got back into the car and drove slowly towards it.  When I had got as close as I dared I climbed across to the passenger seat and took the photo through the (open) passenger window.

A few moments later the owl dived into the field in pursuit of another vole.

I wrote a Bird of the Week post on barn owls less than a year ago so I won't repeat it all.  Here are a few other photos from this week.

The bird above is darker coloured and has no ring.  The smaller lighter bird below, hunting moments before sunset, is ringed.  Females are generally a bit larger so this may be the male.

A couple of days later I went back.  This time there was only one, the lighter coloured, ringed bird.  It was mostly hunting farther along the dunes and sitting on fence post almost half a mile a way.  It did briefly settle a bit closer but still too far away.  This was the best I could do.

It was wonderful to watch them, despite the cold.  I expect I'll be back again soon.

Danger - High voletage

My mate Alan the electrician has been doing some work on my house, including installing a new distribution board.  To his surprise, when he opened the old one he found a mummified bank vole which had been electrocuted between the cables to the main switch - something Alan has never seen before.  Amazingly this had happened without blowing the main fuse.

Many thanks to Alan for all his hard work - and for supplying the title for this post!