An ornithologist asked me if I might have some photos for his presentations. He wasn’t after clear, obvious pictures – rather, he wanted images to help with bird identification exercises for his audience. Nothing too easy for everyone!
My lenses aren’t really suited to great bird photography, so it didn’t take me long to gather a collection of ‘not great but useful’ photos! Fancy yourself as a good birdwatcher? Find my bird ID slideshow on Zenfolio.
http://wp.me/p1RVZ-8Z
Great for wildlife
I also call this wildflower seed mixture my ’Small Blue mix’ because Kidney Vetch is the foodplant for the caterpillar of the Small Blue butterfly. Small Blue is on the priority list for UK Biodiversity and the famous wildlife charity Butterfly Conservation. You can download a Small Blue factsheet from the Butterfly Conservation website.
Bees just love Kidney Vetch and when you see bumblebees delving into the vetch for nectar, you can see how well adapted the flowers are – it fits snugly, and daubs the visitor with pollen. This and other members of the pea family – like Gorse – are important nectar sources in May and early June. Wildlife gardeners know that wild bees need our help, and they are so useful to a garden, as pollinators.
Growing hints
Kidney Vetch likes alkaline/limey conditions and it does best as a coloniser of bare patches and gravelly areas. It even germinates in the hoofprints left by cattle, the ideal grazing companion. Beware – they get eaten out by sheep and rabbits.
Because this is a mixture of seeds it could be something you sow anywhere, but alkaline soils, and especially chalky soils will be best.
I’ve been very pleased to see Kidney Vetch has successfully germinated in a ‘butterfly scrape’ which I excavated to expose bare chalk. I raked over the ground to create a shallow seed bed. After sprinkling the seed I raked it over again and stamped over the whole area to ensure good seed-soil contact. Watering is a good idea, of course, or sow when plenty of rain is due.
Frog Chorus has begun. Read my Natureheads blog to learn more about these croakers.
It was late at night, and I could hear something scrabbling at the high window at the top of the room. Full story at my naturehead blog…
I decided to take a look outside. I took a camera with quite a long lens, and hoped the pop-up flash would be sufficient because I didn’t want to spend extra time putting on a flashgun.
When I got into the garden I could make out that it was quite a small bird. There it was, still focussed on the task of getting through the window. I took a few shots and zoomed in on the big screen on the back of the Canon 40d to see if I had a good enough picture for identification. Even at about 8 metres away in the dark the autofocus had worked and the flash result was OK. [click photo to enlarge]
So here was the Canon 40d with just an integral flash, which did its special pre-shot firing to enable the autofocus and metering system to see something. The lens was a Canon ef 70-200mm f2.8 L is usm with a Canon ef x2 extender. (Have you tried the Sigma 70-200mm alternative? Let me know.)
Looking at the photos again on a computer screen, I could be more sure of the best image. There was a lot of leeway for brightening and sharpening, because we had enough light to start with – but not too much. Shame about the strong reflection in the Skylark’s eye.
Anyhow, I didn’t bother adjusting the image with a fancy software. Without much ado I have simply cropped out the bird and afterwards used Easy Thumbnails by Fookes Software to prepare this image rapidly for the web. The settings were to make it 900 pixels wide, at ‘100%’ quality in conversion, and I raised contrast and sharpening by about 2 points each. You can even select the data conversion process, and I chose Lanczos3 for good quality. Damn good Freeware.
© Jason Ball
