Barney Cooper ☕️ 🦤🏳️🐦‍⬛

Nine little black crescent silhouettes spread across a sky blue background. They are Swifts in a screaming party travelling from left to right.

Elation and melancholy: They’ll be off soon and I wonder if any will come back next year. 🪶

Groucho Marx with big black moustache and cigar in the corner of his mouth. Next to a Springer Spaniel with big black moustache (made of mud) with orange rubber ball in the corner of his mouth.

The the unintended result of feeding my dog Duck Soup.

Soil.

👌 Nice one Tom.

@lesserspotnet.bsky.social

Thanks Jason. One of my local trio on the daily dog walk.

Fascinatingly descriptive, but yes, more than a tad depressing. “On the top of an elm a Wryneck was sitting”, hard to visualise such a sight now.

Northern Wheatear perched on a barbed wire fence post. Grey, pink, cream tones brown-backed with a jet black bandit mask. Posing against a blue sky background.

Northern Wheatear in grass. Loads of subtle brown and cream tones.

Hard to credit, but I didn’t get a Wheatear in 2024. So, a drive out to the coast remedied that for 2025. So, sleek and alert and absolutely beautifully marked. And seemingly common as muck along the Anglesey coastal path.

Glossy black feathered Raven perched on green conifer branch against bright blue sky.

Raven perched atop a conifer against an incongruously blue sky (incongruous for England anyway). #InternationalCrowAndRavenAppreciationDay! #birds #crow #Corvid #cawmunity

Photograph taken through a tiny gap in hedge foliage at dusk of a Barn Owl perched on a wire fence post. Hazy pale bird, but no mistaking what it is.

Shockingly poor record photo of a Barn Owl at dusk near Droitwich. A brief glimpse of it through a hedge as it landed had me poking my bridge camera into the foliage and the autofocus was jumping like crazy. When I got to the field gate it had departed. #worcsbirds 🪶

That’s got to be a 10.

a man in a camouflage suit is laying in a grassy field with the letters m-i-s on the bottom right Alt: a man in a camouflage suit is laying down in a grassy field.

How I arrived on Bluesky.

Curlew walking towards the camera over green & brown salt marsh vegetation.

#worldcurlewday 🪶

You can safely trust your first instincts I think Brett. Stunning footage. 👏

Red Kite drifting over the old church tower against a cloudless blue sky in Old Amersham, Buckinghamshire.

Every time I look up in Amersham there’s a Red Kite casting its shadow. Photo opportunity even with an iphone.

The Misbourne chalk stream in Old Amersham. Placid shallow stream flowing through the centre of town in lightly wooded gardens next to the churchyard.

The Misbourne chalk stream retained by an old wall as it passes the church presumably ancient flood protection. Small boy approaching with fishing net.

Small boy on stream bank with fishing net. Out on a crayfish rather than an Easter Egg hunt.

Red Kites everywhere, but a diversion from birdwatching in the Chilterns. Early doors crayfish hunt, Good Friday on the Misbourne in Old Amersham with grandchild No:1 before the weather changed.

#7: The medieval papal legate.

Eurasian Jay, perched side view of blush pink crown, nape and back, azure upper wing feathers merging into contrasting black & white wing and tail feathers.

Eurasian Jays where I live are always totally spooked by even distant movement of people and dogs and I usually only see them in flight, fleeing. Thus morning I was lucky. #ukbirding #birds

Willow Warbler obligingly sitting still in good light, in an exposed perch against a blue sky background. Miracles do occasionally happen.

Uniformly dark brown-backed warbler with contrasting creamy white chin, neck & eyestripe singing in a scrub birch thicket amongst newly emerging green leaves.

8am got a better image of a Willow Warbler than yesterday’s dog walk result. Hoped for my 1st Lickey’s Whitethroat of the year. I got this and I don’t think it’s a Whitethroat. An ID confirmation, other than Merlin’s, would be very welcome. #ukbirding #birds

Grey sky background framing silhouette of a dead pine with misding top and Carrion Crow perched on the top right-hand lateral branch, head turned looking backwards.

#silhouette #birds
Carrion Crow watching the rain clouds roll in.

Small olive brown warbler with cream coloured breast, partially hidden by twigs whilst singing against a blue sky background.

Almost in-focus Willow Warbler this morning. Fidgety buggers, why can’t they sit still on an exposed perch to sing like the Whitethroat does? (Probably because they don’t have a white throat to advertise I suppose)! #birds

A beautiful adult Grey Heron (grey wings, white breast and neck with black crowned head with yellow bill), feeding a pair of nestlings that are entirely black (scruffy and unlikely to win a beautiful baby competition). The nest, (unusual for herons) is on the ground in a reed-bed.

Reedbed ground-nesting Grey Heron feeding 2 nestlings. #birds

Had me all the way to Otis Reading. 👌

No edits. I dispensed with my pc/laptop & software and just use a smartphone and/tablet where I download to, sometimes adjust exposure and then crop.

The more technical gear I carry in the van and use to use statically on a tripod (also in the van), or from bird hides on nature reserves.

To bear witness to my species of bird sightings. I have an annual wager with my friend on number of species sightings recorded Jan 1st-Dec 31st each year in the UK. He doesn’t trust me & anyway, I enjoy collecting the evidence.

I have “all the gear and no idea”, as a friend frequently points out.

When the UK weather is fair, accessible beaches, woodland & national parks get very busy. My camera I always carry is a Nikon P1000 fixed zoom lens. I have 2 ‘proper cameras’ Canon DSLRs & lenses, but they are not as portable.

Just myself and the dog for 2/3 night jaunts, usually midweek during school term time. This is a small crowded country and quiet wild places are less quiet at weekends. Glad you approve of the photos.