Motorhome Facts Forum banner

Birds of the Cambrian Mountains

25K views 367 replies 10 participants last post by  JanHank 
#1 ·
It seems I used to be a member some 6 years back, and by some strange occurrence, an email popped into my inbox from this forum and website.


I have re-enabled the old account and seems i was posting images to help others with photography.


I will start a new thread and this one will be of my new home and animals and birds around me.


I am disabled with a brain injury and carers, but still manage to enjoy mother nature and life. So the global lock-downs have not affected me, as i am house-bound mostly anyway.



I may have to become a paid member to upload images, if so, this will be fine.


I have spent hours reading through posts of others, and what a collection of people from around the world, wonderful.
I have moved home since last ever posting in here.


I now live on the top of the Cambriam Mountain range in Llanwrda, Mid-wales.
I have the slowest internet connection in the UK at only 0.03Mb/s, or old moden dial-up speed of 33Kb/s per second, but manage fine.


No TV reception, No mobile phone reception, only an old victorian copper cable for a phone line with the internet trying to get to me through this.
Shear bliss, as now I have mother nature all and every day.
I will post some images of the Birds and wild-life up here.
 

Attachments

See less See more
5
#3 ·
What great pics Robert, welcome back, you’re showing as a subscriber so you shouldn’t have any issues as we all have lifetime memberships.

What camera kit do you use ?

Terry
 
#5 ·
What great pics Robert, welcome back, you're showing as a subscriber so you shouldn't have any issues as we all have lifetime memberships.

What camera kit do you use ?

Terry
Hi Terry, It will take me a while to get back into the flow of how forums work etc, but I'll get there.
I am using all now only 35mm.

Presently I use a Nikon D7100.
Just two lens's.
Nikon DX 18-105 mm
A Nikon DX 150-500mm

I am an old school large-format studio photographer, Arca-swiss mono-rail 5x4. I used to lecture in photography and multinedia technology and Design (Graphic design and web-site design) at various universites globally, until 2012, when I suffered a life-changing accident, so life is very different now this end, and with carers I am able to live a very fun life this end.
 
#4 ·
I never named the birds

I forgot to label all the images with the actual birds in them.
See how many you can identify, if too hard, I'll re-do and label them, but all are mostly found all over the UK.
I have one baby Sparrow hawk here with me since last year, he always come back to see me, but I have deliberately tried not to get involved with him.
(Seems I used to think they were kestrels)

I saved him last year as he was near dead and my hands and arms suffered severe cuts and tears because of him last spring/summer, but he survived and is doing great up here.
 
#6 ·
Very warm welcome back Robert.

Name that bird.

first picture post

Red start
A tit of some sort ?
Sparrow hawk I think Kestrels have a pinkish breast, or is it the other way round ?
Roberts baby
Spotted woodpecker.

Second picture post

Chaffinch
Wald Polizei Jay. the forest policeman:grin2:
Baby sparrow

Very pretty ?
Goldfinch
Babby blackbird

Ring dove
Nuthatch
 
#9 ·
Amazing, you did way better than me.
I did not know the first one was a Red Start, and had to go online to get it identified for me.
I call him Mr grumpy

1. Redstart
2. Pied Wagtail (baby-3 weeks old)

3. Male Buzzard
4. Male baby Sparrow-hawk
5. lessor spotted woodpacker

Second set of images.
1. Common Chaffinch
2. Three week old baby Jay
3. 2 week old baby Sparrow
4. I had to go online, and have no memory, so I still forget this one, a bunting of some sorts maybe?)
5. Gold Finch
6. Just turfed out of the nest to get on with it, a baby Robin.
7. Ring/Collar Dove
8. Nuthatch

Seriously, you done exceptionally well, so I know where to come if stuck on me naming them.
 
#10 ·
Pure Mother Nature

I know this is not everyones cup of tea on how or where to live.
But for me, this is shear bliss and worth all the tea in China.
I have done it so you cannot actually find me, unless you are local to here, as these forums are universal, so no reason to show the world my actual address.
I am only a stone throw from the top of the mountain range here, so trust me, the images here are a rare day of sun up here.

I get 99% humidity almost 9 months of the year. Over a metre of rain each year, floods, gales, hurricanes, cut-off from roads etc,
All farming communities for sheep up here, and they have managed each year (The sheep) to break out of their fields and come to my garden and munch it to bits, lol.
 

Attachments

#15 ·
I know this is not everyones cup of tea on how or where to live.
But for me, this is shear bliss and worth all the tea in China.
I have done it so you cannot actually find me, unless you are local to here, as these forums are universal, so no reason to show the world my actual address.
I am only a stone throw from the top of the mountain range here, so trust me, the images here are a rare day of sun up here.

I get 99% humidity almost 9 months of the year. Over a metre of rain each year, floods, gales, hurricanes, cut-off from roads etc,
All farming communities for sheep up here, and they have managed each year (The sheep) to break out of their fields and come to my garden and munch it to bits, lol.
We kept a Caravan on a farm not far from Llanidloes for 3 years. We toyed with the idea of moving there and looked at a house on top of a hill, but for goodness sake don´t ask me where now, it was 22 years ago and a lot of water has run under my bridge since then.
Looks a beautiful spot Robert.
I´ve shown no end of photos of my house on the forum including a video made with a flying saucer, I think they are called wurley gigs or could be drones. Anyway I bet you can´t see another country through your lounge window, I can :grin2:
I was going to say the last squirrel was red, good job you explained it wasn't. I have only seen red and black squirrels in this country.
 
#13 ·
He is actually sitting on the door mirror of my car, looking right in my living room window at me.
I have some birds here who seem to be imprinted to me being there feeders, so it is weird, as i have a little tiny blue-tit who is a wee rascal.
He flies into my house every chance he gets, so I have to be careful opening doors and windows.
He also taps the windows when the feeders are out of food. My carers also love the interatction with all the animals around here
 
#12 ·
I have one family of squirrels.
I know people say to get rid of grey squirrels, but why should I?
they are living animals, and no human has a right to go round killing them, simply because the victorians introduced them back in their days to the UK.


The first image, this guy is sound asleep, cheeky sod, pigged out on pea-nuts and now having a snooze.
The last image is NOT a red squirrel, just low light in the evening, giving a colour /castchange, making it look red.
Our eyes see, our brains alter, so we see everything in white light, but cameras can only record colour temperature, on the Kelvin scale, so cannot alter the colours to make them look like white light was used. Cameras record the true temperature of the scale in kelvin.
This is why you get coulour casts on different types of lights filled with different types of gasses.
Flourescent lights-green cast across the image

Tungsten lights- Orange casy across the image.
 

Attachments

#16 ·
I was a photographer long before digital imaging came online, and since I was computer wizz back in the days when we used to use just a green screen and pure coding, no images or anything back then, I realised the conversion to digital has a serious and hidden design flaw from the onset. to this day it is still mostly unknown and deliberately ignored.

I am one of the very few that knows this and understood how to fix it back then, and used it ever since to correct images back to sharpness of quality we used to achieve on emulsion film for the last 100 years before digital imaging capture.

It is an inherent fault, very easy to cure, but also, if you over-do it, you then turn good images into very severe and over-done horrible images to look at.
Digital imaging by its very nature and how it is achieved blurs every single image once it is recorded to any media (Digital). Remember you are saving tiny little squares of the image that make the whole image. (Pixels). What we see is the finished image, but digitally, it is recorded as simple binary, which we convert into hexidecimal to be able to read easier and understand better. (And here-in lays the design flaw of all digital imaging, including video capture). Binary and final conversion to a monitor screen has a problem.

You simply have to use high-end computer software to correct the blur, and return the image back to shear sharpness of what you saw on the day you took the image.
Keep reminding me, and I promise i will do a simple tutorial on how to correct this design flaw for ever.
All software i use is what is known as industry standard for a reason, so if you use non-standard programs, you may have to search for the filter I use to correct this flaw on all digital images taken.

It is called image correction.
I set-up a macro in Adobe photoshop, so any time i insert my camera, it automatically runs the macro, which in turn corrects every image on the fly, as it takes them onto my hard-drive, before i then go through them to keep the ones I like.

I will work on this tutorial now, so give me a day or so, and keep zapping me to make sure I am doing it for you and others.
 
#18 ·
You lost me after the first paragraph Robert :grin2:
I’ll just stick with the Mac edit, doesn’t make your lovely sharp images, but it will do for my purposes on WhatsApp for instance >:)
I’ve still got the good canon from Hans, maybe your enthusiasm will get me interested in trying it out.
 
#25 ·
You lost me after the first paragraph Robert :grin2:
I'll just stick with the Mac edit, doesn't make your lovely sharp images, but it will do for my purposes on WhatsApp for instance >:)
I've still got the good canon from Hans, maybe your enthusiasm will get me interested in trying it out.
What you have and what you use for the internet for images is perfect for your needs.
It may not be quite as sharp as what i have shown you, but this is just an extra thing if you can, to help, so with-out it, no-one is going to notice.
Just always ditch, remove, delete any unsharp and blurred images.
Never ever show them, as one single bad image can label you, even if you have done a million good ones.
You can keep them if you want, but only ever look in private for memories.
Our brains record more than most people will ever know or use, so even with-out saving bad images, we can still use previously stored memories.
If you get damaged like I got, it does not matter, as you are still left with some memories.
Like I still have all of lifes past up to almost the day of my accident, so not a total loss.
 
#23 ·
Lesser Spotted woodpecker - feeding time.

The red plume of these woodpeckers moves over time and age, so I am still learning which are male and female. This to me is the male dad feeding his baby.

This is one baby of what were originally two babies. I lost one unfortunately, as this is the way of mother nature in real life.
I will correct all text if you spot me getting it wrong.

I may get mixed up with the male/female side, but i have learnt to watch their habits and ways to learn which are which, as each species shares different parenting tasks.

A lot of babies do not care who feeds them and will grab food from another mothers mouth if they get the chance.
 

Attachments

#24 ·
Lesser Spotted woodpecker - feeding time. Part 02

Second set of images i have as they will not all fit in one post before I exceed the limit of what the forum is built to allow.

Last year I also had three seperate lots of babies on some of the species up here, cheeky blighters, worse than rabbits for mating:frown2:, or better than rabbits0:)

I will rescue any animal or bird i find in distress or abandoned due to something happening. Most made it and survived, and one i will put up soon is my Hare my carer named Harold. I have deliberately not let him get too attached to me, but he still lives close by to the house and me. Teaching baby animals to feed and fend for themselves is NOT easy, and trust me, you will not always succeed, but you can't save them all. This might sound cold and callous, but this is the reality of mother nature.
 

Attachments

#26 · (Edited)
How long has the poor little thing in picture 3 in the first set and 1-2 in the second set been waiting to be fed, like Lots wife he has turned to stone :frown2:

These 2 pictures were taken through my dining room window with the Panasonic camcorder, not seen here often, maybe I will notice them once or twice a year so a very rare opportunity to snap them, it was a pair, they wouldn't oblige me getting near to each other for just one shot.

Here they are called a Kernbeißer we English call them a Hawfinch or cross bill because the beak is crossed :smile2:
 

Attachments

#33 ·
How long has the poor little thing in picture 3 in the first set and 1-2 in the second set been waiting to be fed, like Lots wife he has turned to stone :frown2:

Here they are called a Kernbeißer we English call them a Hawfinch or cross bill because the beak is crossed :smile2:
Hawfinches are beautiful. My carer has spotted one up here. He said he has already mentioned it to me, but I have no memory of him ever telling me.
(I have 3 carers, pro-rata)

The little guy waiting on dad to feed him was certainly a long wait for him.
It's like the parents take their babies close to me and the house for safety, as they all seem to know the birds of prey will not swoop so near to the house here.
The little woodpecker could only sit around waiting on mum or dad to come and feed him, but he is all grown up and gone now.

I also notice a lot of birds turf their babies out to get on with it really. They give them a little help, but then they have to leave home and go set-up their own lifes away from the parents.
I have a female crow, she is beautiful and elegant, does not come too close to me, like the other birds, but each year she has one baby, then next year the baby is gone, and she has another new one.
My sparrows and tits all live together, so their numbers have swelled due to me, but i do not mind.

I have all the Blue-tits and great tits nesting in a rock face and my North facing gable side of the house in the roof (Not inside the roof of the house).
All my sparrows are at the south facing gable end.
But they both feed together in bunches, and all have their own little ways of pecking order towards each other.
 
#27 ·
I still have an old Sony Mavica camera bought 25 years ago. It had the most amazing zoom and auto steady for long shots. Main trouble was media storage was 1.3MB floppies and tech moved on.
Now of course it's old hat and the batteries have died. I aught to bin it but like a lot of things keep for nostalgia.

Ray.
 
#30 ·
I still have an old Sony Mavica camera bought 25 years ago. It had the most amazing zoom and auto steady for long shots. Main trouble was media storage was 1.3MB floppies and tech moved on.
Now of course it's old hat and the batteries have died. I aught to bin it but like a lot of things keep for nostalgia.

Ray.
Do not dare bin it. Remember memories are good, but hard cold objects are better, as the will always reenforce your memories.

Plus over the years, you will notice how soon things come to be worth money.
 
#35 ·
Hi EJB,
Present day cameras and modern technology allows you to simply use .JPG for all screen and display shots,
If I was back in the industry and teaching, yes, all images I took were captured RAW when I could.
Simply because the image has more data, so can be manipulated more. With a file size so huge it would soon fill a memory card.

I would always instruct students NEVER to use RAW, unless they are going into pure photography for magazines or publishing houses.
.JPG fine is way good enough image quality for most things in life now. Even publishing houses are set-up to simply use .JPG fine, .JPEG fine .BMP .PNG and some will even use .GIF's

I have had to revert to mostly using cameras in automatic mode and use Adobe Photoshop to get the images back to what I expect to see.
I do use ONLY and always Spot Metering, all my life.
This is why my images have contrast and depth, as using the 17% inbuilt grey scale, you get over-exposed shots on every camera you ever use. (Done on purpose and deliberate by the makers, as under-exposed will never be able to be brought back to life)

I have also set my camera up to take three shots in succession every time I click.
Spot metered reading, then one full stop down and one full stop up.

I have had to sort of re-learn how to do certain images, and now struggle, so I have had to show my carers how to use hand-held light meters to help me, as automatic setting will over-ride what you were hoping to achieve.
The worst one I see is the camera resorting to turning up the ISO to stupid levels, resulting in your images being so grainy, they cannot be looked at or printed. Digital term- noise.
Too much digital technology is been developed to take the skill and working out of settings, to do it automatically, but for a lot of us, this is annoying and frustrating.


The cameras and ever advancing technology all seem to have an inbuilt hidden setting that allows them to secretly get back to automatic settings, (Taking control away from humans on purpose) the minute you put the camera down, turn your back on it, or switch them off.:surprise:
 
#34 · (Edited)
Thank-you EJB for your kind words.
The issues I had here in the past were my own doing I'm afraid to say.
I have a brain injury that causes me to become verbal with frustration, trying to obviously do what I somehow know i was able to do in the past, but now cannot, and i apparently on occassion take this frustration out verbally and can get verbally aggressive. Not violent, just a war of words.

I was ashamed to read what i had said to another member in here some years back, as this is not me that i know anything about. (I was able to remove some of the posts, but not all).

I lost it over some stupid questions put to me.
So nothing to do with the forum or the owners or people who run it. It was all down to my own problems coming to a head.

I do sort of understand since my accident why I am now never allowed to teach or lecture ever again, because of the brain injury I have.
I have no cencept of dates or time, and do not even know what year we are in, my own date of birth, how old I am, and this is classed as very serious, but inside, to me, I am the same person i have always been, to me anyway (This is why now I have carers i supposse till my end)

Only ptoblem I have is I do not know i have anything wrong up top, so others have to point it out, which is very frustrating and very embarrassing for me.

This is why I have retreated from towns and cities to mother nature, and away from human contact as much as possible.

The local farmers over the years now know about me and what i go through daily, and they all help out for miles around up here, as they also, like me, get cut off every winter up here, so they look out for me and check in on me from time to time.

I am very happy this way and love the birds and animals around me, and use them for comfort as they never question me, or even know or care i have a serious brain injury, and they don't care one bit i am disabled.
They just see me as a place to get food and for this little bit of freedom and them coming to me, I am very happy here.

I use photography now to try and document my days to give me something to look back at instead of looking at other peoples. I never know a lot of images weeks later were taken by me, and my carers always have to remind me and tell me.
I need prompting in life daily for basic things, but always end the day with a smile on my face, so things are NOT as bad as others are always trying to tell me.
 
#32 ·
Lovely photos. We get most of the same birds here in Norfolk as you do in Wales. Unfortunately, we have a Sparrow Hawk in the area and he is helping himself to quite a few of the smaller ones :( New additions in the last couple of years are some buzzards and red kites. Plenty of pigeons and rabbits for them so hope they leave the struggling little ones alone. My dog caught a myxied rabbit today so one less for the buzzards. It was a blessed relief for the poor thing to be put out of its misery :(
 
#45 ·
My favourite bird in the whole world, maybe I should not admit this, but it is the Kestrel.
My last home in Spalding , I had a Sparrow Hawk that was also a goood little bird nafler on me.
I just accept it as mother nature in all her ways of life.
I learnt to shut off emotionally to it as it happens, as you have to unfortunately.
Up here, I have a Buzzard that hangs around close to my house, but he is beautiful, and majestic in his own way. Very solitary Bird.
I also have a solitary Heron who is absolutely huge.
It is like watching a plane take-off on a runway when he gets airborn.
Again, to far away to capture on camera yet.

I have loads of Red Kites, but only one comes to me, the others are right across the valley from me in the forests and up on the hill tops. I will be looking westwards at them out my window.
So images of them are not in my collection yet, as too far away to capture, but wonderful to watch.
I also have a large family and group of jackdaws, and a family of magpies.
Both hang around together as one group.

I call my magpies my screaming terrorists.

I do sometimes creep round the side of the house and suddenly say hello to them, as I love the cackle they give off when they fly off. It is teasing them I know, but they tease others, so I do not feel guilty about this.

I do not allow pidgeons in my garden or near me, as they would scoff all the food in no time I put out for the other birds and animals..
 
#37 ·
My Red Deer

I moved home from when I joined this forum to where I live now.
I moved from the flat crop farming fenlands in the east of England, Lincolnshire, to the mountains here in Wales, so will try to look out some of my images from last place of all my birds and animals.

Last home I took a Female Red Deer and her two babies back to my house and garden through farmers crop fields, day and night. They were not local, but farmed somewhere, and living off the land meant they had escaped and were struggling to survive.

One baby was in a bad way and we struggled to keep her alive.
Looking back through my dairies, (I keep these, as do my carers, as I have no working memory any more), it looks like I got in a lot of trouble for this little escapade and putting one of my carers through it with me. opps.

Anyway, with-in three days and two nights we had managed to get all three back to my house and garden. (Like this one I since moved to, plonked in the middle of mother nature).

I lost the one baby a few days later unfortunately, the mother was still poorly and the other baby, but over time the mother and other baby survived.

I fed and cared for them for two years, mother and her baby, and over time they got used to me and one of my carers. I could call them from almost a mile away from my house and feed and pet them by hand. It was as if the mother knew I was trying to help her and her babies.

Here are some images of these beautiful creatures from my home country of the North of Scotland.

If I never kept dairies, all I would see is one female deer and one baby, among my images, and would never have known there were two babies originally, or even the struggle we had to get them back to my house.
 

Attachments

#38 ·
Red Deer Part 02 of 03

Here are more Images of my Red Deer and baby.
I set it up with the farmers in the area before I moved away to let them live in the fields and also got a livery near-by in Spalding to come out help look after them for me.

The girl to this day still goes and leaves bags of oats and carrots for them, and the closest house to me back then also let them into there back garden and also helps feed them.

The three farmers in the area are all happy and will not touch them as they said they will never do any real harm to the fields, and they enjoy seeing them wandering around the open fields over the last few years, as it is something new to them really.

A lot of crop farmers work hard and never interact with others some of the year as always busy ploughing, planting, etc, so seeing animals like this must also be comforting to them in their tractors.
 

Attachments

#39 ·
Red Deer part 03 of 03

I have images for years, but among this little collection, you will now see how they were poorly, and soon after they came back to life.

People for miles around had eventually found out a person (me), had two Red Deer in their garden, as the country lane went right past my lving room window, and the deer would wander into my front garden beside the road sometimes.

The last image is when the pair of rascals had just ran out of the neighbours back garden after destroying his duck pond!!!
Of course he was fine with it, as all they did was knock over some stones when they were rolling about in the pond and mud and scattered the ducks into the fields behind me..
 

Attachments

#41 ·
Brilliant Robert. We often see deer in the field outside our garden but just too far away to take good pictures with my cheap equipment. Long gone is the SLR and now just a pocket Casio.
We have seen 5 all last week but dread when the 'hunters' are seen up the road.

Ray.
 

Attachments

  • Like
Reactions: patp
#43 ·
I have only heard of one Red Deer up here being spotted. Still waiting to find it, as i will soon have it coming home with me.

I use an extreme lens that takes two hands to hold and a very huge tripod to mount it on.
I have two places in my home to set it up looking out my windows, and as you can imagine, every time my carers set it up on one window, the animals and birds brazenly start dancing and having a party at the other window on me.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top