Scandinavian Invasion

Redwings, Blackbirds, Thrushes and Fieldfairs arrived from Scandinavia over night and we woke to a garden exploding with the movements of birds.

All our trees laden with glowing autumn berries were covered in hungry beaks and i wished i had the forethought to set up a camera to get a time delay sequence as the berries vanished at astonishing speed and branches which were so laden they had been boughed over almost touching the ground in the morning , were by the afternoon free of all their weight and bouncing up to the sky.

I watched the fluttering of wings and tails for hours, on this amazing sunny autumn day, fascinated as they swooped and dived, gorging themselves whilst all the time nervously watching there surroundings and vanishing like lightening whenever they sensed human movement. This made photographing them a wee bit tricky, so i had to take surreptitious blurry shots through the kitchen window.

Venturing outside, they vanished, hiding away in the foliage of the pines and bracken until I had gone by.

I used the scarce sunlight to go round the garden taking some photographs of the last vestiges of autumn colour and found the beautiful Red Admirals had also come back out from their temporary hibernation to bask on the ivy in the sun. If you look closely at the photo above you can see over 15 butterflies - just beautiful!