More Black Redstarts

Are you tired of seeing my photographs of Black Redstarts yet? I’m beginning to feel like one of those 1970s dads with the curtains closed insisting on projecting yet another box of transparencies onto a rickety screen from a bunch of Instamatic slides after a pioneering foreign holiday.

They’re very active and constantly on the move which makes them impossible to follow.

It’s a better strategy to find a perch they occasionally visit and manoeuvre to the ideal background and then sit on a small portable stool and wait. Here’s one with a typical block of Rome flats in the background.

Finally, a male comes to visit. There are many, many birds which are female or juvenile but males are unusual visitors. I liked this curved and fire-blackened branch and so waited for him here.

As they say, “Lovely plumage”.

It’s also possible to catch them on the hop. That’s if your camera can take photographs lasting 1/4000 of a second.

High speed photography reveals another world which is normally just a blur before our eyes. It’s a revelation to see into their high-speed lives. It’s all so fast I’d need a sit down if I wasn’t sitting down already.