ickle baby

Knowing I couldn't compete with yesterday's blip, I decided to go for a bigger bird today and spent about 20 minutes stalking thrushes on my hunkers on the main green in the park. I'm sure I looked just as mad as yesterday, but in a different way! I got a really nice portrait of what I thought was a song thrush, and was happy to blip that.

On my way back to work I heard an almighty racket coming from the bushes, and when I looked in I couldn't believe my eyes, little birds everywhere! It's probably not obvious from this picture, but this guy is seriously tiny, his body is probably only an inch and a half long. I noticed a few like this, which I couldn't identify, and several that I knew were long-tailed tits, maybe about two dozen or so in total. The LTTs don't stop for a second, definitely not long enough for my el cheapo lens to focus, so I didn't get any decent shots of them, but I got a couple of these.

When I got back to work I had an email to say the bird guide I ordered had arrived, great timing! So I looked this up and - probably not surprisingly to those of you a bit more on the ball than me - it's a juvenile long tailed tit. The portrait of the thrush (which the book also informed me was not a song thrush, but a mistle thrush!) was the better photo, but this little one won't have his baby clothes on for long so I thought I should blip him while I have the chance :)