Kingfisher

The elusive Kingfisher to be precise.

This male below flew straight into my camera view and landed on a post.

You have to get lucky to photograph this bird.

Remembrance Sunday

I thought this year that I would post some images that I took in 2004 at the US Battle Monuments Cemetery near Florence in Tuscany where US Military dead of WWII were buried. The site is located 7 miles South of Florence and contains 4,402 headstones and a wall at the main memorial inscribed with the names of 1,409 missing in action.

Three Medal of Honor recipients are located here.

Those buried and remembered here formed about a third of the losses suffered by the US Fifth Army during this period. 

This site is located on the West side of Italy. The US Fifth Army fought its way up the West side of the country, whilst the British Eighth Army fought its way up the East side of the country.

The wall below inscribed with the 1409 MIA.

I found this to be a very peaceful place to sit and remember. 

Small World that it is, searching the records on line recently regarding this cemetery, I found the surname of Norris on six occasions, one of which was a Private First Class Lee Roy Norris. 

I wish I had known that before I visited.

A Study of the Blue Tit

The Blue Tit (Parus caeruleus). 

One of our common species which we tend to overlook sometimes, but when you study them closely they are so colourful.

Great-crested Grebe Autumn Portraits

Scenes from a Parkland Walk

Scenes from my latest Parkland walk. 

It was in the sunshine with a temperature of 21 degrees celsius.

It was just like Summer again, even the wind was warm.

This Goldfinch below was certainly enjoying the weather.

The leaves of the various Oak trees in the Parkland are just turning brown now.

Walking up a path alongside a rail track I was following a Green Woodpecker. It kept moving along on to another convenient perch each time as I moved closer. I say it, as I was not sure at that time if it was male or female. These shots are heavily cropped. You can see that it landed on an old disused telegraph pole.

Then it tried the old Woodpecker trick of hiding behind the pole

Anyway I lost it for a while and on returning back down the pathway I later heard it calling again. From the direction of the call I knew roughly where it would be. An open field close to the pathway is known to be a favourite place of the local species. Sure enough I could observe it over a low hedgerow, but still at some distance. As you can see from the images below it was a female of the species.

From this shot below you can observe its large claws that enables it to hang on to the side of trees.

Mushrooms and toadstools can be found everywhere now and these were alongside a pathway.

In a meadow known conveniently as Heron Meadow, I observed two Grey Heron. There was a dispute going on and the Heron in the background didn't appreciate the one in the foreground being on 'his' patch. Eventually the interloper possibly a younger one, flew off to another part of the meadow.

To show how unusual our weather is at the moment I found this Dog Rose still hanging on in a sheltered spot.

Similarly this Red Campion was still blooming well.

Quite a few Dunnocks were observed on the walk like the two below.

Something to gladden the eye was this new arrival, a 'South Devon' calf.

He was already making friends with this 'Belgian Blue' calf that I featured a while ago which as you can see is growing well.

Finally, I watched a large group of Long-tailed Tits moving though the Hawthorn trees.