autofantasia's photos with the keyword: bird

For this week's Sunday Challenge , the theme for which was glass . A challenge that finally gave me an excuse to take some shots of this cute little owl. The wings, legs and head are metal, but the body is made from a single piece of orange glass. I tried him in various positions around the garden, but decided in the end to use this shot of him sat on the roof of our smallest garden shed, mainly because I liked how the light was illuminating the glass. Once I'd decided to go with this shot though I had to get busy with the cloning tool as the roof was covered in bird poo ... nothing to do with the owl I hasten to add! Please view on black for best effect.

A 'nearly ran' for this week's Sunday Challenge , for which we were asked to photograph a bird or birds . After struggling to get close enough to a group of village ducks on the river at Great Ayton, or to get many decent shots, this particular duck's actions summed up how I was starting to feel. I'm also not entirely convinced that it was just diving for food. I tell you, being mooned by a duck isn't all it's quacked up to be!

For this week's Sunday Challenge , for which we were asked to get out and photograph a bird or birds . Now that may sound like an easy challenge to many of you out there. I mean as one of our 'leaders' pointed out everywhere in the world has birds: you can visit a lake, a woodland, a wetland or even take pics of the garden birds from the comfort of your own home. They can be flying, up a tree, in a bush, on the ground, in the water, or a budgie in a cage. Yes indeed, all true. However, I quickly came to realise that much of what you can achieve in this area is down to the equipment you have at your disposal. Now whilst I am lucky enough to have a Nikon D90, I only have the 18-105mm kit lens that came with it and although it's proven to be quite sufficient for most of the photographs I take it does have obvious limitations. For this particular challenge I found it very difficult to fill the frame with my chosen subject even when I'd zoomed in as far as I could. And when I tried to get closer to the subjects to compensate for this I found most birds flew off before I could get close enough to get the shot I was after. So, accepting the limitations of my equipment and my poor field craft I decided to pay a visit to nearby Great Ayton. This small village, a few miles from Northallerton, has a large duck population and so I thought they'd be more used to people and so might be more tolerant of any would be photographers. Once again though what sounded easy became more complicated on the ground and taught me much not only about my camera, but also ducks in general. For example, I thought with it being a sunny day they'd be on the village green or sunning themselves on the river bank meaning light wouldn't be an issue ... no such luck! No, it turns out that when it's warm and sunny these ducks prefer to be in the water underneath the shade of the densest trees they can find. And whilst I might normally try to overcome that by shooting at a slower shutter speed I couldn't do that because these pesky birds rarely seem to stay still for a second: constantly moving, flapping their wings and doing anything they can to make getting a decent shot of them nigh on impossible. This meant that in the end, from literally hundreds of shots (yes really), I only managed to get a handful that I was happy with ... proving that shooting birds isn't all it's quacked up to be!

The common wood pigeon is a large species in the dove and pigeon family, which is increasingly common here in the UK. Much to the annoyance of our two dogs, particularly the younger one, they are frequent visitors to our garden, which is where I took this shot last August. Stop The Pigeon

Yet another 'nearly ran' for this week's Sunday Challenge , which had the intriguing theme of texture . This is actually a close up shot of the Kiwi sculpture I chose as my 'official' submission for the challenge and it shows in detail the carving that went into replicating the bird's feathers. Also for Sight and Sound: Pictures & Music . Sorry, but I couldn't resist it folks: youtu.be/52iW3lcpK5M

This amazing tree sculpture is located within Harrogate's beautiful Valley Gardens, which begin only yards from the town centre and which have attracted visitors to the area now for decades. After WWII a wide variety of botanical specimens were planted and in 1957 the Christchurch Botanical Gardens in New Zealand generously donated a host of specimens which were planted in the New Zealand Garden, which was specially constructed for the purpose of accommodating them. This area was redesigned in 2010 and now includes several wood carvings, including this one inspired by the Kiwi. For this week's Sunday Challenge , which has the theme of texture . Please take time to view it large for best effect.

As regular visitors to my photostream will know, I struggled greatly with last week's Sunday Challenge , which had the theme of high key . Thankfully, I found this week's challenge of low key much less stressful. And whereas last week I introduced you all to Gerald The Dinosaur, this week it's the turn of Harry The Owl who is one of three metal owls that make up an ornamental sculpture to be found in our back garden. He's the furthest to the right of the trio - hence him being called Harry ... the other two then are, as you may have guessed, called Tom and Dick. I took the shot outside after 10.00pm last night once it had got dark - heaven knows what the neighbours would have thought if they saw me. I had the camera on a tripod and for a change worked with manual settings throughout ... even the focus! As for the key light that was a small pocket torch that I had positioned to my right hand side behind a small board of MDF so as to stop any light spilling onto the foliage behind where I'd positioned Harry. Best of all as far as I'm concerned is that I've posted this pretty much as it came out of the camera. The only 'work' done on it was a slight crop and I 'dodged' the white in his eyes just a smidgen as I felt they were a little flat. So, there you go, not quite SOOC, but pretty damned close!