Sometimes... you just get lucky

Male Blackbird with snail

Sometimes, in photography, luck intervenes and you get a 'hero' photograph served up to you as if it were on a plate.

I was photographing from my first floor back window, which is almost like a blind, aiming to get photographs of a very diligent female blackbird gathering material for her nest, when this blackbird landed about eight feet from me.

Although blackbirds are not of great interest to me, I swung my camera around - my Panasonic G9, with the fantastic Lumix Leica 200/2.8 attached and fired off some shots. I could see he was pecking at the mortar between bricks either side of the flat roof in front of me but what I did not see until I 'chimped' after he flew off was that the very clever bird had teased out a juicy 'escargot' for his breakfast.

As soon as he was gone a beautiful magpie took his place. I'm not sure how to sex these birds so I will assume it was male. At such a short distance the incredibly sharp Lumix 200/2.8 could quite literally pick a pimple off a bee so the detail in the shots of both birds was incredible.

Magpie

Meanwhile, below me the female blackbird continued to gather spent foliage for her nest and was engaged in a tug of war with some dead foliage. 'A woman's work is never done', eh?

'Tug o' war'