Friday 21 December 2012

Wednesday 21 November 2012

Mousehold


Trying to catch what is left of the autumn colour last weekend, might put some more of these up later on.




Wednesday 14 November 2012

Sunday 19 August 2012

Holly Blue egg laying

The ivy in the back garden is due to get chopped before it takes over.  Now that this little critter spend the afternoon doing this...


....it looks like it will be spring before it is touched!

Thursday 19 July 2012

Eyelid colour in Long-tailed Tit


The local tit flock passed through the garden yesterday evening, so I tried to get a few shots off as they had bathed and looked reasonably comfortable (two or three even dozed off).  When reviewing, I noticed that there were differences in eyelid colour.  I thought that this might be an age / plumage variation but it seems that the colour variation is down to their mood, this conclusion has been reached by some scientists who summarised it like this...


Long-tailed Tits captured in mist-nets showed variations of eye-lid colour from pale yellow to deep red. Individual changes occurred within a few minutes, and were sufficient to account for a changing frequency of colour categories in the population during winter. Birds with redder eyelids..were heavier, and were more likely to make distress calls when handled. These results suggest that eye-lid colour reflects a bird's internal state or 'mood'.


Have a look for yourself.   The link for the paper is at the bottom of the post.

Red Eyelid


Yellow eyelid
 Here is the research...

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