Brightening Up

Earlier on today the sun threatened to appear a few times and it was generally a bit brighter outside than it has been. It was also a degree or so warmer than it has been, so it wasn't quite so bitterly cold outside. The bird activity in the garden hasn't been quite as busy as a result, but I did see a Goldcrest flitting through the apricot tree earlier which was good to see. 

Below are a few pictures I took whilst I was outside with my camera earlier. Two long-tailed tits have been seen visiting the garden frequently, and as they are quite tame, getting close to them to photograph them is quite easy. The fact that there's only two of them says to me that a few of them may have died over the winter. It's really quite unusual to only see two of them, and in previous years, seeing 10 in a group wasn't unusual.  Hopefully they have a successful breeding year this year to boost numbers back up again.

Chaffinch numbers seem to be particularly high in the garden at the moment, and this chap was happy to have his photo taken whilst I was outside...

That's all for now folks, thanks for reading and enjoy the rest of your day :) 

Back Home

The last couple of weeks of my university term have been very hectic to say the least, hence the lack of activity on this blog in this time. I've had 4 or 5 deadlines to meet, as well as a couple of other bits and pieces to do. I have to say that I'm more than relieved to finally be at home for the Easter break. I've been back for a couple of days now and I'm settled back into the ways of living at home where I'll be for the next month.

The weather since I've been back has been bitterly cold- particularly today. The garden has been covered with a layer of snow which hasn't disappeared in many places just because it hasn't been warm enough to thaw it all. Ever since I filled the feeders up yesterday, the garden bird activity has been pretty frantic. Since I've been back, a female Bullfinch and a Siskin have both been seen in the garden. The latter is a bird we've only seen once in the garden previously, and that was about 3 or 4 years ago, so seeing that was quite a surprise, especially as I was in the garden doing a few jobs when it visited. A Coal Tit pair have also been visiting the garden quite a bit over the last couple of days which has been good to see. 

Below are some of the dreadful photos I managed in the short time I spent outside with my camera before my hands were nearly frozen and I decided to head back inside again.

Obviously at uni, as I'm in halls, there's no garden to keep track of, so It's been good to catch up with the garden back home again. Hopefully should be getting back into the swing of things as far as blogging is concerned, and will get round to reading other blogs over the next day or two. Until next time though, wrap up warm and lets hope Spring arrives at all this year. 

Messing About In f/1.8

Last weekend was my 19th birthday, which is kinda scary really. I mean, 19, really?! It just sounds a lot older than 18 to me, but maybe that's just me being stupid. 

Anyway, moving on to avoid me rambling, one of the things I got for my birthday was a Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens, which is something I've wanted for a while now. To be honest, although I've used the 18-55mm kit lens on my 500D a lot, it's not the best in terms of quality and with it only going down to f/3.5, it's not the best in some circumstances. Of course the results you can get with it are much better than what can be managed with a digital compact camera, and if you stick with it, you can get some nice landscapes and macro shots with it. 

But I've been looking forward to making the most out of the f/1.8 aperture of the 50mm lens for taking portrait shots, but also for things like plant photos and landscapes. Many people say a 50mm lens is something which is a bit of a must-have for photographers and I have to say, I've had a lot of fun with it so far. Most of the time I've been using it with the aperture wide open and enjoying taking photos with a really nice blurry background. 

In between a lecture and a group meeting today I decided to have a quick walk around the Harris Garden with my camera and new lens. Some of the photos I took are below. The daffodils below are mostly in full flower now and brightening up the garden nicely... 

The snowdrops are still out but some of them are now on their last legs, and the short period where both the snowdrops and daffodils are in flower is nearly over. 

These crocuses could also be seen in the surrounding area... 

I have no idea what these flowers are but photographed them anyway..

There were some nice sunny spells for much of today and the temperature was verging on warm when the sun came out from behind the clouds. The photo below was taken as the sun briefly appeared:

So all in all it was good to get used to using my new lens, and I'm sure I'll use it much more in the future. 

I've been pretty busy with various bits of work recently, and so time for blogging has been limited. Sorry for not checking by everyone else's blogs as often as I usually do. I'll drop by over the next couple of days to catch up with what I've missed. 

Thanks for reading and have a nice evening :D 

Scottish Wildcat Project

So I'm pretty snowed under with work at the moment and so time for blogging has been much reduced. My Easter break is in about 2 weeks but I have lots of deadlines to meet before then. So I thought the best thing to do would be to bring the work to my blog. Genius, eh? 

For my Mammals: Species, Diversity and Conservation module, I recently had to produce a poster on a mammal species of my choice, with the poster based around a scientific paper published since 2000. I wanted the species I picked to be something which can be found in the UK, cause I knew other people would probably go for something more exotic, and also because there are plenty of interesting mammal species found here which I could write about. 

So in the end, after hours of looking through the internet for a suitable and interesting paper that wasn't gonna send the reader of my poster to sleep, I stumbled across a paper about the conservation of the Scottish Wildcat. The wildcat's main threat in the wild is the hybridisation with other wild-living cats. There are now issues with identifying "pure" Wildcats in the field as a result. This study basically helps deal with this issue. To avoid repeating myself too much, an image of the finished poster is below, which should summarise the study reasonably well. Hopefully you should be able to read the text, although the tables and graphs will be pretty difficult to see.

If you're interested about the study, click here to view it online, it's really quite a good read. 

It looks as though March might be a slightly quieter blogging month for me than February was, but I'll see what I can do, and I may have a couple more posts like today's to keep things ticking over. Thanks for reading :D 

And The Cold Spell Continues...

Well actually, now I've finally got round to posting this, temperatures have now started to climb and I think we can expect warmer conditions next week. But when I went out for a walk around campus on Saturday it was still only about 4 degrees, and even with plenty of layers on it was pretty chilly. 

Just a standard patch walk really, but saw an interesting range of species along the way including Kestrel, Kingfisher, a Grey Heron flying overhead (which isn't as common as you might think on the lake), a few Great Spotted Woodpeckers, Redwings and Mistle Thrushes, lots of Goldcrests and Nuthatches, Jays and Siskins. The photos below show the view across the lake: 

There wasn't anything particularly out of the ordinary on the lake other than a Kingfisher flying over the water surface, and a couple of Tufted Ducks, which aren't always around on campus. As usual, the lake was pretty much dominated by Black-headed Gulls as seen in the photo below. As you can see, some of the gulls, like the top one in the photo below are starting to show their spring plumage with that dark chocolate brown head beginning to appear. 

Moorhens like the one in the photo below were seen plodding around the edge of the lake too: 

And these Mallards looking who were looking rather smart...

As I was heading over to the woodland, I saw this Jay hopping around on the ground underneath the trees. Please excuse the terrible photo- they're incredibly hard to approach without them flying off. 

The first bird I saw when I walked into the woodland area was a Blue Tit, which is photographed below. This one was perched on a branch just a few metres away and kindly allowed me to take a few pictures:

Quite a few Goldcrests were seen in the woodland although again, I was unable to get anything other than an average record shot. The thing is, when you see them they often stick around for ages and are very happy to forage around in the vegetation in close proximity to you, but they just don't stay still for a second and are constantly shuffling along a branch, hanging upside down or hovering around. The best I managed is the photo below. 

I was constantly looking around, hoping that the next tiny bird I saw would be the Firecrest, but I'm really starting to think it may have moved on now. Haven't seen it in a while and no one seems to be mentioning it anymore. Still, I feel pretty lucky to have seen it, and maybe it'll turn up again next winter, we shall see.  

And one more final record shot for the day, the Nuthatch in the photo below. Despite the fact there are lots of them here on campus, they're really very shy and getting close to them is pretty difficult, similarly to the Jays. Anyway, enough excuses, the photo I managed is below: 

That just about rounds up my walk yesterday, hopefully by next week the temperatures will have risen enough for it to start feeling like spring :D