Whilst I was gardening, this blackbird was collecting insects for its young:
I had been weeding around the strawberry beds when this blackbird came hopping around collecting grubs and insects. As this was not the first time that I had seen it, I collected my camera from the house, put on a telephoto lens, and kept it ready for the next time the bird was in range. It wasn’t long before it came back.
This photo shows the bird emerging from one of the strawberry beds in our garden – I hadn’t long weeded that particular area so the bird was quite interested in what it could find. The bird doesn’t stay still for long, it was always hopping around and moving quite quickly. So much in fact that I had trouble tracking it to take the photographs.
In this image, I managed to take the bird whilst is was on the grass with a beak full of insects:
Although the grass is a bit long, covering up the lower part of the bird, I like this photo as it shows the bird in context searching for, and finding, food for its young. Every few minutes it flew off to its young in a nest in a nearby apple tree (that was covered in ivy which provides good shelter and privacy).
This one is my favourite:
Again, the blackbird has food in its beak. Here it is in a flower bed not far from where I was working. I like this because the lens has focussed well on the bird but has thrown the background out of focus helping the bird to stand out – it looks quite three dimensional. As it was quite sunny, you can see the shadow on the ground but this does not distract from the subject.
You can see more photos of the blackbird in the garden in the garden gallery.