A PLEASANT SURPRISE!

Although it's great to see and photograph the more common birds of which we should never take for granted (look at the demise of the house sparrow) there's nothing better to get the blood pumping than something out of the ordinary.
I was chatting to my mate on the phone looking outside as the early evening light was fading then suddenly to my utter surprise a female Sparrowhawk landed on a post at the back of the garden. I threw my phone down grabbed my camera and managed to get this image not great just a record shot but not to bad considering how bad the light was.

sparrowhawk

After picking my phone back up and explaining to my mate what had happened I quickly reviewed my images and this one above was about the best of a very noisy and blurry bunch.

Redstarts have migrated back now from their winter quarters in Africa and are in good numbers, we had four different nesting pairs last year this one's been exploring the nest boxes in the garden.

male redstart

exploring the boxes

This male Green Woodpecker flew into a tree near the house, these are very shy and wary birds so I was pleased to get this record shot.

green woodpecker

Also managed to capture an image of this Jay, they were quite frequent at my feeders at one time but not so much now especially over the last couple of years.

jay

 It was nice to watch and photograph (well try anyway) something a bit different, just goes to show with birds you never know what when or where things are going to turn up.