Now that winter is approaching, I have filled up my bird feeders to help out the little ones. There is already a lot of traffic and I have a first row seat from my living room window. Yesterday I was very happy to see the first crested tit to come for a visit, I have only ever seen a crested tit once before and it was many years ago. Unfortunately, no more crested tits today but many others – mostly great tits, followed by willow, coal and blue tits.
Some nuthatches also dropped in briefly and the jays were terrorising the neighbourhood as usual. They are really skittish though, so all I need is to show myself in the window to get rid of the big bullies. Also the woodpecker that single-handledly (single-beakedly?) ate a whole container of peanuts last spring wanted to have its share. But the woodpecker is almost as shy as the jay, so it didn’t stick around for portraits.
One visitor that I was hoping for though was the red squirrel. Last year I built a perch specifically for the squirrels, but the winter was so lousy that I never made an effort to set up food and wait for the furry critters. I decided to give it a try today, so I put some sunflower seeds in the crevices on top of the stub, hoping that the squirrel would stay on the perch instead of running up a tree with the loot. And it did! At first when I noticed that the squirrel had taken my bait, I took a few pictures through the window just to see how the composition worked out. I was amazed to find out that my perch setup is so close to my window that if the squirrel keeps its tail down, I can only fit the whole animal in the frame if I use a vertical composition!
But, shooting through the window produces fuzzy pictures, so I carefully opened the window and the squirrel stayed put, even if it seemed to figure out that something was going on. Then I was really clumsy when I changed from horizontal to vertical composition, and the squirrel disappeared when it heard the thud. But the good news is that if I just would manage to keep things quiet, I could get some really nice squirrel pictures. Just add snow!