{"id":3137,"date":"2013-05-21T14:16:30","date_gmt":"2013-05-21T14:16:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3137"},"modified":"2013-05-21T14:16:30","modified_gmt":"2013-05-21T14:16:30","slug":"blackbird-in-the-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3137","title":{"rendered":"Blackbird in the garden"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Whilst I was gardening, this blackbird was collecting insects for its young:<\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-3138\" href=\"http:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/2013\/05\/blackbird-in-the-garden\/e13_2459p1\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-3138\" title=\"E13_2459p1\" src=\"http:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/E13_2459p1-600x399.jpg\" alt=\"Blackbird coming out of the strawberry bed\" width=\"600\" height=\"399\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/E13_2459p1-600x399.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/E13_2459p1-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/E13_2459p1.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 984px) 61vw, (max-width: 1362px) 45vw, 600px\" \/><\/a>I had been weeding around the strawberry beds when this blackbird came hopping around collecting grubs and insects. As this was not the first time that I had seen it, I collected my camera from the house, put on a telephoto lens, and kept it ready for the next time the bird was in range. It wasn&#8217;t long before it came back.<\/p>\n<p>This photo shows the bird emerging from one of the strawberry beds in our garden &#8211; I hadn&#8217;t long weeded that particular area so the bird was quite interested in what it could find. The bird doesn&#8217;t stay still for long, it was always hopping around and moving quite quickly. So much in fact that I had trouble tracking it to take the photographs.<\/p>\n<p>In this image, I managed to take the bird whilst is was on the grass with a beak full of insects:<\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-3139\" href=\"http:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/2013\/05\/blackbird-in-the-garden\/e13_2462p1\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-3139\" title=\"E13_2462p1\" src=\"http:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/E13_2462p1-600x399.jpg\" alt=\"Blackbird collecting grubs and insects for its young\" width=\"600\" height=\"399\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/E13_2462p1-600x399.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/E13_2462p1-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/E13_2462p1.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 984px) 61vw, (max-width: 1362px) 45vw, 600px\" \/><\/a>Although the grass is a bit long, covering up the lower part of the bird, I like this photo as it shows the bird in context searching for, and finding, food for its young. Every few minutes it flew off to its young in a nest in a nearby apple tree (that was covered in ivy which provides good shelter and privacy).<\/p>\n<p>This one is my favourite:<\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-3140\" href=\"http:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/2013\/05\/blackbird-in-the-garden\/e13_2551p1\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-3140\" title=\"E13_2551p1\" src=\"http:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/E13_2551p1-600x399.jpg\" alt=\"Blackbird with food in its beak\" width=\"600\" height=\"399\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/E13_2551p1-600x399.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/E13_2551p1-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/E13_2551p1.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 984px) 61vw, (max-width: 1362px) 45vw, 600px\" \/><\/a>Again, the blackbird has food in its beak. Here it is in a flower bed not far from where I was working. I like this because the lens has focussed well on the bird but has thrown the background out of focus helping the bird to stand out &#8211; it looks quite three dimensional. As it was quite sunny, you can see the shadow on the ground but this does not distract from the subject.<\/p>\n<p>You can see more photos of the blackbird in the garden in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/garden\/wildlife\/blackbird-in-garden\/index.php\">garden gallery<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Whilst I was gardening, this blackbird was collecting insects for its young: I had been weeding around the strawberry beds when this blackbird came hopping around collecting grubs and insects. As this was not the first time that I had seen it, I collected my camera from the house, put on a telephoto lens, and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3137\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Blackbird in the garden&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-garden","category-nature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3137"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3143,"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3137\/revisions\/3143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}