Oh boy I’m excited, I had two crested tits for visit! I’ve only ever had some fleeting encounters with them before, but today there were at the feeder all day and they were completely fearless. They didn’t mind me moving around and they happily flew so close to me that I couldn’t even try to shoot, but the biggest problem was that they like to forage the fallen seeds on the ground and very rarely sat on any proper perch. And even when they did, they move too fast to catch them in the viewfinder and focus and shoot. I thought that the nuthatch is a difficult bird to photograph, but it’s downright pedestrian compared to the crested tit! I was happy I got anything at all, and I learned from the experience so I’ve made some changes to the feeding site and I sincerely hope that they will be back tomorrow. It is such a fascinating bird… not very colourful, but the pattern is exquisite and then there’s of course the crest.
I was wearing full camouflage today. For some of the birds it doesn’t make any difference, for example the willow and coal tits don’t care what I wear. The great tits are somewhat more suspicious and the greenfinches even more so, but today I got some nice pictures of a greenfinch. And a great tit sat on my shoulder! Even the squirrel came for a visit, it kept giving me the eye but it didn’t find anything to worry about because it came down a tree just a couple of metres away from me.