Hi Gwyn, good to 'see' you again .

This is a good week for meeting up again. Yesterday evening was a gathering of some old friends in a pub - the last time we did it was pre-pandemic .

Steve

What Lenny says . Love the stonechat - both the photo and the bird!

Steve

A lovely, gentle set .

Having spent some time today pointing a camera at flowers, I envy your backgrounds!

Steve

The obvious replacement for the lens is the DA*300mm f4 with 1.4 teleconverter. Together, they give 420mm at f5.6, which is very close to the long end of the 150-450mm. Without the teleconverter you have 300mm at f4, which is close to the middle of the 150-450mm. Of course, zoom and the short end are lost but presumably it's the middle to long end you want for wildlife. Optically, the DA*300mm is superb and the 1.4 teleconverter is made for it. I can't make a direct comparison with the 150-450mm because I don't have it.

You'd notice a distinct reduction in weight - together, the lens and teleconverter are about half the weight of the 150-450mm. I went down the 300 + 1.4TC route after hearing a talk from a semi-pro wildlife photographer who said that his ideal wildlife kit was a 300 f4 + TC because he was now at an age when carrying heavier kit around held no attraction. I knew what he meant!

Steve

Enjoy you street parties, folks!

No street party in my street this time round. We did one for the last jubilee and thoroughly enjoyed it in spite of the weather. Even got the front page of the local paper. But since then people have moved, personal circumstances have changed, we're all 10 years older and none of the new inhabitants of the street took up the challenge. So if the weather will let me, I'll be spending today trying to get the front lawn looking like a lawn after No Mow May - time to get the strimmer out!

Steve

Not as far as I could tell. I hung around waiting to see what might happen, but nothing did. Come to think of it, I've never seen the adults feed their young in previous years. Perhaps they do it when they're tucked away behind the chimney.
Dawn every day... and 1am a couple of nights ago.
Gulls moved into my area when rubbish was being put out in black bags and stayed when bins replaced bags. Weymouth seafront is about 5 miles away, a reliable source of chips and other fast food for gulls. There are regular mass movements of gulls to and from the coast. And some gulls seem to find interesting things in nearby fields, particularly when ploughing is underway.

Steve

For the last 2 years, herring gulls have nested and raised a youngster behind the chimney of the house two doors away. They have gone one better this year and produced 2 balls of fluffy feathers. Hopefully it was less of a surprise for them than it was to me - until looking at the photos, I thought there was only one. So here they are, probably a couple of weeks old, able to stand up but not walk around yet.

The mouths of the little 'uns are open because they are screaming their heads off. The adult opened its mouth silently for a couple of seconds in what looked suspiciously like a yawn. A yawn because it was fed up with the incessant screaming of its offspring? Or because the little 'uns are the sort of babies that keep parents awake at night and permanently tired during the day?

K3 + DA*300mm + 1.4TC.

Thoughts, comments, messages to the proud parents etc. welcome as usual.




Steve

Another lovely set which shows yet again that seeing is much more than just looking. My eyes keep returning to No. 10, intimate rather than grand and somehow invoking a feeling of being there - I can almost hear the lapping of the water on the shingle.

Steve

A lovely set from a lovely place. The stand out ones for me are 4, 9 and 11, particularly the twisted oak - wonderful tree, great composition and framing.

Steve

The whole set taken together tells the story of the walk very effectively. And the pink blossom is a startling reminder that this is spring, not mid-winter! But must agree with other folk about the snow on tree trunk pictures - superb.

Steve