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You are here: Home / Photography / Saturday Snapshots #73

Saturday Snapshots #73

by Jeanne Horak on January 16, 2010 9 Comments in Photography, Saturday Snapshots

Blackbird

Blackbird – London, January 2010

Our house has a mature pyracantha hedge that surrounds the garden on two sides.  It’s a great plant for a number of reasons:  it is evergreen (meaning that we have year-round privacy); it makes masses of sweet-scented blossoms in the spring and summer; it has formidable thorns (meaning good security); and in the autumn and winter it is covered in brightly coloured red and orange berries.  Or rather, it was until early January.

On 5 January, it started snowing and the land only really thawed out yesterday.  There was much complaining in the press about cancelled flights and delayed trains, but for the most part, people did not starve.  But for garden birds, the situation was very different. If you have no stores of food and no paws to dig through snow and ice, the frozen ground is a feeding disaster and starvation a real possibility.  It took only a day or so for the birds to discover that our hedge was a veritablle smorgasbord of non-frozen nutrition and soon we were inundated:  blackbirds, blue tits, robins, wood pigeons, fieldfares, black caps and chaffinches were suddenly making swoops on the hedge all day long. Over the course of less than a week, they have systematically picked the hedge clean of berries.  It does not look as pretty anymore, but it’s great to know we helped so many birds to survive the cold snap.  This picture was taken on the first day when the birds started feasting on the hedge – a female blackbird delicately picking a single berry.

Saturday Snapshots is a series of non-food photographs published every Saturday on CookSister. Previously featured photographs can be viewed on the Saturday Snapshots archive pages. Many photos featured in Saturday Snapshots are available to buy as high-quality greeting cards or prints in my RedBubble store, or even as high-quality A3-size calendars. If you want a custom calendar with your own selection of photos, starting with any month (not only January), please e-mail me and we can discuss your requirements.

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  1. susina says

    January 16, 2010 at 6:42 pm

    Beautiful!!!!

    Reply
  2. Joan Nova says

    January 16, 2010 at 8:03 pm

    Timing is everything in life and in photography…and yours was perfect that you actually caught it with the berry in the mouth. Fabulous.

    Reply
  3. barbara says

    January 16, 2010 at 10:04 pm

    How perfect. I have had a flock of white galahs outside my window this morning. By the time I got my camera they had flown too far away to get a good shot.

    Reply
  4. Manggy says

    January 17, 2010 at 5:51 pm

    That is impressive. In my neck of the woods it’s virtually impossible to get a close-up shot of a bird without it flying away!

    Reply
  5. nina says

    January 18, 2010 at 9:20 am

    That is an awesome shot!!!

    Reply
  6. Jeanne @ Cooksister says

    January 18, 2010 at 12:51 pm

    Susina – thanks!
    Joan – I have to admit that there were a couple of discarded pics too, but I knew eventually I’d get her just nibbling the berry!
    Barbara – just had to look up galahs on Wikipedia as I’m not familiar with them – they look so exotic & beautiful! Shooting pics of birds does make you realise that shooting pics of food is not without its advantages. For one, the food can’t fly away!!
    Manggy – I will admit that there was a 300mm lens involved… 🙂 But yes, they were very nervous & did fly away a few times…
    Nina – thanks!

    Reply
  7. Jamie says

    January 18, 2010 at 2:23 pm

    Wow! That is incredible! Beautiful!

    Reply
  8. deeba says

    January 18, 2010 at 3:36 pm

    Take a look at that Jeanne…LOVE it! Not easy to get a bird nibbling…lovely!!

    Reply
  9. [email protected] says

    January 21, 2010 at 3:20 am

    love the shot!! you are really blessed to be living amidst beauty like this.

    Reply
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Jeanne Horak is a freelance food and travel writer; recipe developer and photographer. South African by birth and Londoner by choice, Jeanne has been writing about food and travel on Cooksister since 2004. She is a popular speaker on food photography and writing has also contributed articles, recipes and photos to a number of online and print publications. Jeanne has also worked with a number of destination marketers to promote their city or region. Please get in touch to work with her Read More…

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