{"id":871,"date":"2011-02-23T08:30:19","date_gmt":"2011-02-23T08:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=871"},"modified":"2012-07-25T07:35:11","modified_gmt":"2012-07-25T06:35:11","slug":"familiarity-breeds-content","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/familiarity-breeds-content","title":{"rendered":"Familiarity breeds content"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>During the winter, when I&#8217;m busy with admin and business development, I do most of my birdwatching close to home.\u00a0 Studying <strong><em>Jackdaw<\/em><\/strong> and <strong><em>Starling<\/em><\/strong> roosts involves a short walk, but with a constant level of activity around the feeding station (conveniently placed to be visible from the office window) I can enjoy the hobby that has been with me since early childhood throughout most of the day.<\/p>\n<p>For the last couple of weeks, I&#8217;ve had my camera and tripod set up\u00a0in the kitchen.\u00a0 Any newcomers to bird photography could do worse than concentrate on the birds in their own garden.\u00a0 I blogged about\u00a0our feeding station\u00a0recently, but I make no apologies for adding a few more images to the blog now \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_872\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-872\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/familiarity-breeds-content\/attachment\/_dsc6607\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-872\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-872\" title=\"Brambling [Fringilla montifringilla], Scotland Gate, Northumberland 09\/02\/2011 (c)Martin Kitching\/Northern Experience Images\" src=\"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/DSC6607.jpg\" alt=\"Brambling, bird photography, Northumberland\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/DSC6607.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/DSC6607-300x199.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-872\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Brambling<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><figure id=\"attachment_873\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-873\" style=\"width: 333px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/familiarity-breeds-content\/attachment\/_dsc6793\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-873\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-873\" title=\"Goldfinch [Carduelis carduelis], Scotland Gate, Northumberland, 14\/02\/2011 (c)Martin Kitching\/Northern Experience Images\" src=\"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/DSC6793.jpg\" alt=\"Goldfinch, bird photography, Northumberland\" width=\"333\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/DSC6793.jpg 333w, https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/DSC6793-199x300.jpg 199w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 333px) 100vw, 333px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-873\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Goldfinch<\/figcaption><\/figure>\u00a0One species I finally managed to get some good images of is a bird that captivated me when I first saw a flock of them, nearly 40 years ago, in my neighbour&#8217;s Pear tree.\u00a0 With their almost non-stop movement, persistent vocalisations and, let&#8217;s face it, looks that are so cute it should be illegal <strong><em>Long-tailed Tits<\/em><\/strong> are enchanting.\u00a0 In previous years they&#8217;ve been infrequent visitors to our garden but this winter they are here pretty much all day every day.\u00a0 A lot of our clients have made similar observations and wondered why this change of behaviour has happened.\u00a0 <strong><em>Long-tailed Tits<\/em><\/strong>are insectivorous and it seems that likely that the hard winter weather, coming so early in the winter has had a devastating impact on their natural food source and made them increasingly reliant on artificially provided food.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_874\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-874\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/familiarity-breeds-content\/attachment\/_dsc6696\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-874\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-874\" title=\"Long-tailed Tit [Aegithalos caudatus], Scotland Gate, Northumberland, 14\/02\/2011 (c)Martin Kitching\/Northern Experience Images\" src=\"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/DSC6696.jpg\" alt=\"Long-tailed Tit, bird photography, Northumberland\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/DSC6696.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/DSC6696-300x199.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-874\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Long-tailed Tit<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During the winter, when I&#8217;m busy with admin and business development, I do most of my birdwatching close to home.\u00a0 Studying Jackdaw and Starling roosts involves a short walk, but with a constant level of activity around the feeding station (conveniently placed to be visible from the office window) I can enjoy the hobby that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,98,5,16,139],"tags":[52,118,103,382,121,831,161],"class_list":["post-871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-choppington-woods-northumberland","category-northumberland","category-photography","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-birdwatching-northumberland","tag-brambling","tag-goldfinch","tag-jackdaw","tag-long-tailed-tit","tag-photography","tag-starling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=871"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":883,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions\/883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}