The Nest

Since Covid restrictions took control of my life, I've spent a lot of time in the garden and in recent months I've been working on taking better photos of the birds that visit me there. There aren't as big a variety as I'd like, but they give me something to do from time to time. I first wrote about them last November after taking what is to date my best photo of a bird in flight.

That bird was just visiting but we have some that set up home in our garden for a while. Among those is a strange little weaver bird which keeps constructing nests, then demolishing them and starting new ones. Here he is hard at work constructing one of his early nests in August 2021.

Initially I wondered what happened to all the nests he built. I thought the wind had blown them away, or that some other species of bird was trying to chase him away, but a friend told me that his strange behaviour is normal for the species. However it was only recently that I witnessed him demolishing his most recent nest. Unfortunately I was unable to get an uncluttered view of him in action. But I did get a couple of shots of the half-demolished nest when my presence chased him away.

This was a pretty straight forward view, which I nearly entered for DPChallenge's Wabi Sabi challenge.

In the end I decided this one was more interesting.

He finished the demolition after I went inside and seems to have no plans to build another nest on that bush.

Getting it Right in Camera

The challenge was "Blue". I wasn't feeling inspired but I was determined to enter something. It was the final day of the challenge and I had nothing.

It was during a period in which Covid numbers were low, so I was able to go on with my life in something approaching a normal manner. Trouble was that though there were interesting things around, none of them were blue. But this line of grey doors looked interesting. 

Changing the colour of an image in Photoshop is easy, but for this particular challenge no editing was allowed. All changes had to be done in camera. 

No problem. All I had to do was make a couple of changes to my normal settings. First change my white balance. Then I decided this scene would work best as a square, so that required another change to my settings. 

So much easier than my usual workflow where editing takes a lot more time than getting the shot.

Unfortunately my preference for black and white images means I can't often work this way.

Too Close for Comfort

I spent a long time recently taking photos of the bees on a tree in my garden. I wasn't happy with the results.

Bees aren't easy subjects. The ones I was watching were very active, making it difficult to get properly focused shots. And I couldn't get close enough to get detailed shots. I didn't want to risk getting stung.

This shot was taken a few days earlier. A lucky shot when I was concentrating on the flowers from a safe distance. Perhaps that's a better approach for me.

I have this more detailed photo of a bee in my DPChallenge archive - a photo of a dead bee. And no, I didn't kill it.