My family very kindly took out a mortgage to buy me a new camera.

I now have a Nikon Coolpix P950. Although slightly larger than the Canon because of the large lens, it is compact in the case and easy enough to transport. It’s zoom is much more powerful than that of the Canon which is great for capturing birds. Of course the reasoning was to get me out of the house again.

I have very few pictures of inland water birds. Or to put it simply I don’t even have a picture of a duck. So I went to the Geneva nature reserve by the parc des eaux vives to see the ducks there. It is a lovely spot and even in January I was able to get some nice shots of Coots, Mallards and Tufted ducks.

Spoiling for more I took a walk around the lake at Divonne. At first I was disappointed by the very few birds on the water. However, I was able to broaden my knowledge, recognizing Gadwalls on the walk out. Coming back past the “beach” I saw why there was virtually nothing on the water. The pontoons were crowded with Herons, Cormorants and Grebes.

There were a number of common birds missing from my inventory so I’ve added them in. Notably the very attractive pigeon!

Over the years(!) I’ve often told people that I have a picture of such and such a bird on my web site. The problem is that when you land on a blog page you don’t immediately have an easy way to find the blog that contains a given bird. To address this I have made the landing page a complete alphabetic list of all the my photos. The next thing might be to then add links back to the original post for anyone interested. A little time will be required 🙂

There are a few notable absences from the list. I seem never to have taken a photograph of a Duck (Mallard) for example, nor of a Pigeon. I shall keep my eyes peeled for these rarer birds.

I started this blog in 2016. It has been a great journey and I’ve really loved sharing what we’ve seen together. There will be new things. We get hints of feathers we’ve not seen before. But it takes some time to put together the rarer things. I guess patience is the main lesson in photography.

Just for fun I gathered up what I think are my top ten photos, not in terms of wonderful birds, but in quality of shot. Because I want to push that aspect of what I do and refine my composition and image quality skills.

These are in no particular order but if one really stands out you can let me know.

Robin/Rouge-gorge

House sparrow/Moineau de maison

Puffin/Macareux

Magpie/Pie

Kestrel/Crécerelle

Jays/Geais

Heron/Héron

Green finch/Pinson vert

Black kite/Milan noir

Blue tit/Mésange bleue

Redstart/Rouge-queue

Long-tailed tits/Mésanges à longue queue

Greater spotted woodpecker/Grand pic épeiche

Okay. More than 10. I’ve added the French names (I think, corrections bien venues). I’m always embarrassed that I can’t talk to my neighbours about what I’ve seen.

Still almost no rain. But cold, and the ground remains hard. The number of visitors to the garden is growing all the time.

Before we look in the garden we managed to see the thrushes again at the Versoix woods.

In the garden the prettiest event was the “Charm” of goldfinches, at least nine, that used all the feeders and still needed space on the ground.

They were happy to share with the other customers. Amongst them the many sparrows, the greenfinches and the various tits

We have a new female woodpecker, I needed a lot of shots to see the back of her neck, at which point I think she looks quite indignant.

The robin looks well and undisturbed by the crowds. Though he is not given to sharing.

The Hawfinch surprised us by reappearing for a day, but has since disappeared again. Look at the size of him. Twice as big as a greenfinch and about three times as big as a blue tit.

The crested tit is back too and seems to hang around a lot more.

Finally there is the crow who decided to venture into the crowd. An unusual occurrence.

I hope you have had a great pancake day, Ski week or just a nice half term break. We’ve been spoilt by the lovely weather. But it has been very cold, so the feeders have been emptying rapidly. We had a new visitor last month in the shape of a Hawfinch. Hawfinches are apparently red listed and very hard to spot in the UK but in Switzerland they are quite common.

The powerful beak can break cherry stones which need 40Kg of pressure.

The crested tits are also back in town.

Green finches have been appearing too.

In spite of several returns to the Versoix woods I’ve still had no luck photographing the black woodpecker. I hope this doesn’t become my Moby Dick. We did see a couple of groups of deer, two boars and a fox. I was so delighted to get a reasonable picture of the deer, that I’d covered my lens, thereby missing the boar and the fox! Grrr.

We thought we saw some thrushes in the distance at Versoix too, but the pictures are not “conclusive”. Maybe when I catch the black woodpecker I’ll get lucky with them too.

The Magpie is all alone this year. More worried about eating than mating so far….

And finally I couldn’t resist sharing this shy chaffinch. For once he’s in the light and you can see some of his splendid colours.