April Macro Photography

I was originally intending to go out in the garden and attempt some bird photography this morning, but bird activity at the feeders has been relatively quiet all day (although it began to pick up as I started writing this). Just about the most frequent visitor today has been a male blackbird who has been collecting worms from the lawn, and suet pellets from the ground feeder and taking them, presumably, to a family of hungry chicks. 

Also, the light early on today was quite harsh and bright, and there was quite a strong breeze, which wasn't perfect for bird photography. So I decided to head out with my 50mm lens instead and try and capture some of the colours that can be seen around our garden at this time of year. Due to the last few months being quite mild, the blossom and leaves are out on most of the trees here already. All of the photos in this post were shot with the aperture wide open at f/1.8; I really do love playing around with this lens as it allows for some extremely narrow depth of field, perfect for close-ups of flowers. 

One of the first colours you'll notice when walking round our garden though is the deep red of last years cotoneaster berries (the ones which haven't been eaten by the blackbirds that is). Throughout the winter, blackbirds and the occasional song thrush picked berries from this shrub, and more recently, blackcaps too. 

The blossom in the picture below was from one of the shrubs with overhangs into our garden from next door. No idea what it is- any ID help would be appreciated.

More ID help needed here; these purple flowers which I posted photos of a few days ago on this blog are growing under the swing frame in the middle of our garden. We did plant them ourselves but we can't remember what they are!

Onwards now to the blossom of the two apple trees we have growing around the vegetable plot area of the garden.

Just next to one of the little apple trees, a plum tree is also currently in blossom: 

These deep blue-violet flowers, grape hyacinth (Muscari latifolium) were seen on the railway bank at the end of the garden. Photo complete with freight train. Pleased to have timed that rather nicely. 

This patch of white coloured daffodils (Narcissus 'Thalia') quite close to the house are in full flower at the minute: 

And finally, some forget-me-nots, at the edge of the lawn...

So quite a range of colours for early April. I look forward to seeing more flowers appear as the spring goes on. 

I'm going to stop typing now before I fall asleep at the keyboard; do forgive me if I've made any howling grammatical errors in this post. Thanks for reading. :)