Bloomin Heck!

 

Winter Bloom, originally uploaded by andyskelton.

Winter is well and truely with us, with a flury of snow on the ground this morning, whilst other parts of the UK have been more severly affected. In amongst all these frozen conditions, I managed to snap this bloom in all it’s glory.

Taken at London’s Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT), a regular haunt as any who follow this blog (Bueller?) will know, the various lakes and ponds were almost completely iced over. The avian inhabitants, rightly so, were all sheltering out of the cold and so what I’d hoped would have turned out as a great photo opportunity left me wanting.

The large lens packed away, I did happen across a flock of a dozen or more Long Tailed Tits which were lit beautifully by the late afternoon sun and which were very very close. There are times to snap and there are times to enjoy, and this was a certainly a case of the latter. Unperturbed by our presence, as these petit birds often are, we stood for 5 minutes or more whilst they flew from branch to branch within a few feet of us. Magical.

Back to the bloom, with all the ice and sub-zero temperatures, I was amazed to see some flowers still blossoming in one of the wildlife garden areas. Handheld with my sigma 150mm macro lens and Canon 1D4, these were the last shots of the day but very welcomed ones with their delicate pastel colours in this drab environment. Bring on the Spring!

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