TWO FOR JOY AND AN OWL DRAWING

It's an absolute joy to be able to photograph birds now and this pair of magpies were sitting obligingly in a tree nearby. I find all the crow family incredibly shy so have never managed to get close before. This camera seems to be pretty good at ignoring the double glazing and focusing pretty well on the subjects. If we were to rule our lives by the old magpie rhyme, our fortunes would change by the minute we see so many of them. Here are a few more:

And a chaffinch

and some of our cheeky flock of sparrows feeding yesterday

I took these few pictures yesterday; it was windy but fine, unlike today!

Hound Tor and Haytor; two lumps on the horizon

Long shadows in the early-ish morning

Rock formation at Kestor

After lunch today, Snippet and I went down to the river and over to Scorhill stone circle to take some pictures for my stone circle post....a long time coming - sorry! I will get there eventually. I took these on the way over there:

The North Teign in winter mode as Origami boy would put it

Looking over towards Fernworthy Forest from Scorhill

Having had a kind of request for a drawing of an owl I managed to get one done last week. Ponies and sheep are much quicker to do than birds....all those feathers! This took about six hours but I'm pretty pleased with it. I asked Paul Riddle who writes a blog about owls if I could use some of his images and he very kindly said yes. His pictures are staggering and well worth a look. He might want to consider changing the name of the blog in the light of recent events though! Do have a look at them at http://owlsaboutthatthen.blogspot.co.uk/ . I'm really enjoying the bird drawing challenge and am going to crack on with some more next week I hope. I love the loose feather that was sticking out of this Little Owl's head, about to fall off I'm assuming.

The school bus is due any minute with a very hungry schoolboy on it so I'd better stop now. Until next time, have a great weekend and here's a Snippet on the lookout for rodents.