Friday 25 September 2009

Four Mistle Thrush, no less!

Despite best efforts I haven't managed to get into the park for a long time. I used to think that being retired would give me lots of time to myself, but reality is the reverse: I had more free time when I was fully employed!

In recent weeks it seemed that every time I had the opportunity to get into Hilly Fields it was either very windy or raining or Prendergast School was just out. The three worst time to see the birds.

This morning was delightfully different. First I filled the birdfeeder in the Quiet Garden then took a walk across the park. That's when I spotted the first Mistle Thrush in the West field just north of the meadow; a few moments later it was joined by another and a couple of minutes later another pair showed up. They were seeking food in the grass and gradually making their way south to the meadow.

I didn't have my camera with me, which is rare, so took a few photos with the mobile phone. In my excitement I forgot that its zoom facility is purely electronic so, since I took most photos at full zoom, the resulting jpegs are only 15KB instead of the normal 3MB and appallingly bad resolution. The best of them has been put through Photoshop to enhance the three birds but you still need the arrows to see exactly where they are.