There’s quite a few woodpeckers hanging around the Longlands valley. You can hear them early doors, in March the hollow hammer drill drum of the nest excavations often make you wonder if they get headaches. They are also frequent bird table visitors and although the green woodpecker is a little bit more shy, it was quite a surprise when a pair of greater spotted peckers built a nest just a couple of metres from the bird table.
From a photography point of view, a beautifully coloured bird is not an opportunity to be missed. However, it proved a a bit of a challenge. Of course the birds are shy and they are feeding their young so you don’t want to interrupt their parental duties, so you have to be discreet as possible. To get these shots I wore mostly green and stood in the shrubbery with an army scrim to disguise my head shape. (Wish I had a photo to show obviously crap this disguise was..). Anyway being still was the key as the parents where feeding the chicks every 5/15 mins, luckily I don’t have a hectic lifestyle (or a TV ) so being still for a few moments was not a problem, although keep the camera up to my eye was causing severe shoulder ache.
This is the female. The auto focus was going all over the shop in zone (my normal Fuji autofocus setting for wildlife) with the wind blown leaves in the foreground often adding a distraction, so went to manual focus. Also centre spot metering to save me time in post.
Here’s the male (with a little bit of red head feather action).
Another visitor to the bird feeder was a cheeky grey squirrel, I thinks its a male…..
Nice tail.
Looks like a tiny todger to me.
Fuji XT3 w/ 100-400mm #bokeh (mostly at around 200mm).
Click
esterspears 
Elizabeth Taylor
June 3, 2019
Such joy to see your pictures. As usual a high standard.