View allAll Photos Tagged common
WWT Slimbridge Wetland Centre.
What3Words
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The Common Pochard (Aythya ferina) is a medium-sized, plump diving duck known for its distinctive appearance and social nature. It is widespread across the Palearctic region, where it breeds in temperate and northern areas and migrates to the south and west for winter.
Size:
They are 42–49 cm (17–19 inches) in length with a wingspan of 72–82 cm (28–32 inches).
Male (Drake):
Males are easily identifiable by their striking reddish-brown, or chestnut-coloured, head and neck, bright red eyes, black breast and rear, and a pale grey body with fine darker lines (vermiculations). Their bill is dark grey with a wide blue-grey band across the middle.
Female (Hen):
Females have duller, darker grey-brown plumage with a browner head and dark eyes. Eclipse Plumage: After the breeding season, males moult into a duller, mottled grey-brown "eclipse" plumage, similar to the female, for camouflage while they are temporarily flightless.
Diving Duck Features:
They have a stocky build, a short neck, and legs set well back on the body, which helps them to dive efficiently but makes them somewhat clumsy on land.
WWT Slimbridge Wetland Centre.
What3Words
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The common redshank (Tringa totanus) is a medium-sized, widespread wading bird known for its distinctive, bright orange-red legs and its loud, piping call, which often serves as an alarm call for other marsh birds. It is found across temperate Eurasia and is a migratory species.
Habitat: Redshanks are found in various wetland habitats, including coastal saltmarshes, mudflats, estuaries, and inland wet grasslands, mires, and flood meadows.
Diet: They primarily feed on small invertebrates such as marine worms, earthworms, crane fly larvae, molluscs, crustaceans, and small fish, which they find by pecking or probing the mud in shallow water.
Able to get out in some sunshine yesterday afternoon. Scotland's weather today has restored to default settings :-(
Now they may be called Common Loons, and it is not like they are rare in these parts, but I rarely see them and when I do it is usually in the middle of a large pond or lake. I know they are divers, and I am guessing that they prefer deep waters.
When driving through Elk Island National Park, for much of the stretches of road there are trees bordering the Road and a view of some of the ponds are obstructed by those trees. Still while moving slowly you can still see past the trees in an obstructed sort of way. I often drive slowly in these parts hoping one day to perhaps fine a moose or Elk on the other side of a pond or better yet wading through a shallow part. That has not happened yet, but maybe some day I will get lucky. On this day I got lucky in that I spotted something on the water that looked a bit different. In coming to a stop and looking through my camera between trees I saw that it was a loon. I was thrilled. I took a couple of obstructed shots in case they that is was all I was going to get. I got out of the car made my way down through the ditch and the row of trees and brush to get this shot.
There were two of them and if they saw me they did not seem concerned. Still at quite a distance (this is a fair sized crop) but much closer than what I am used to getting. Also reflections were quite different than the few other shots I have of Loons so all in all I was thrilled with the opportunity.
Senecio jacobaea
Common ragwort is a tall growing plant that has clusters of yellow, flattened flower heads. It’s a common 'weed' found in paddocks, pastures and on waste ground, the yellow flower heads are highly attractive to bees and other insects. I’m not sure if that is a bee or a hover fly in the photo. This was a contender for yesterdays Saturday Challenge, but I wasn’t 100 per cent happy with its sharpness, it was quite breezy, so I picked something else.
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WWT Slimbridge Wetland Centre.
What3Words
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The Common Crane (Grus grus), also known as the Eurasian crane, is a large, graceful, migratory bird with a distinctive trumpeting call that is widespread across Europe and Asia. Known for its elaborate courtship dances and conservation success story in areas where it had previously become extinct, it is classified as a species of Least Concern globally.
Key Characteristics and Appearance:
Size:
As the UK's tallest bird, the common crane stands around 110–120 cm (about 4 feet) tall, with a large wingspan of 220–250 cm (7-8 feet).
Plumage:
It is mostly slate-grey, with a black and white head and upper neck, and a notable bare red patch on its crown.
Distinctive Feature: Adults have elegant, drooping, curved tail feathers (actually elongated inner wing feathers or tertials) that form a "bustle".
In Flight:
Unlike herons, cranes fly with their long necks and legs fully outstretched. They often travel in large, V-shaped formations and can reach astonishing altitudes of up to 33,000 feet (10,000 meters) during migration.
Habitat and Diet:
Common cranes are highly adaptable, inhabiting a variety of wetlands, including bogs, marshes, and swampy forest clearings during the breeding season. During migration and winter, they often gather in large flocks in open areas, such as agricultural fields and floodplains, where they can forage for food and roost in shallow water for safety.
They are omnivorous, with their diet changing seasonally. They primarily eat plant matter like roots, seeds, and grains, supplementing this with animal prey such as insects, snails, amphibians, and small rodents, especially when breeding and feeding their young.
Behavior and Life Cycle
Sociality:
Common cranes are territorial during the breeding season but become very social, forming large flocks during migration and wintering.
Courtship:
They are famous for their elaborate "dances," which involve bobs, bows, pirouettes, and throwing vegetation in the air. This behavior serves to reinforce lifelong monogamous pair bonds and can occur at almost any time of year.
Reproduction:
Pairs typically lay one or two eggs in a large nest built on the ground in shallow water. Both parents incubate the eggs for about a month, and the chicks fledge around 9-10 weeks of age, remaining with their parents through their first winter.
Lifespan:
In the wild, they typically live for about 13 years on average, though they can reach up to 26 years.
Common orange lichen (Xanthoria parietina) growing on a poplar tree bark.
Złotorost ścienny (Xanthoria parietina) rosnący na korze topoli.
Common redstart (Phoenicurus phoenicurus) male perched on a wooden pole.
Samiec pleszki (Phoenicurus phoenicurus) siedzÄ…cy na drewnianej tyczce.
Unfortunaterly Thursley Common is a very long way from me - and I'm not sure I fancy camping there with 100 other photographers during the plague luring poor old Colin in with mealworms. So has to be old school and walking round to work out where the males frequently call from - then spending a couple of hours hidden in the undergrowth next to one of maybe half a dozen possible trees on the off chance he shows up whilst being stung by nettles and bitten by mosquitos. But that is bird photography for you!
Common Merganser (Mergus merganser) flock on the waters of the K'tzim-a-deen Grizzly Bear Sanctuary in the Khutzeymateen Inlet along the west coast north of Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Canada.
27 May, 2015.
Slide # GWB_20150527_5371.CR2
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RKO_5019. A beautiful Common Kingfisher leaving the water with a lot of water droplets around it. Another unsuccessful dive. Kingfisher spam....
Copyright: Robert Kok. All rights reserved! Watermark protected. Kingfisher spam continued.
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Wrightsville Beach, NC. I usually point my camera towards the water cause the sun is with me, but I never get to shoot the nesting colony. In the morning, it is back-lit. I did today to get some different shots and different lighting. If nothing else, it's good practice shooting and processing.
First winter of this young Common moorhen. This is hard to find food when water is frozen. Golden hour light
Apparently the so-called Common Sandpiper is not as common as it once was as there has been a progressive decrease in numbers since 1968, though they are still quite common on northern rivers and lakes. The current British population is estimated at 13,000 pairs. Our birds winter in Iberia and Northwest Africa arriving back in late March and April. Studies have shown that they are very site faithful to their breeding grounds, but they are also site faithful to their wintering grounds. It's almost as if they have two different time shares for six months of the year. This photograph shows their very long tail which they habitually bob. When I watched their tiny, fluffy chicks, they also bobbed their tiny tails in an exaggerated fashion. This one was on a Pennine reservoir not far from where I live.
The common blue is the most common blue. The top of the wings is blue in the male and brown in the female. On the underside of the front wing there are two spots near the wing base, which distinguish this species from all related species.
Management:
The Common Blue is a kind of moderately nutrient-rich, but flowery grassland with a varied vegetation structure with open ground here and there. Preservation or creation of this type of grassland can best be done through extensive grazing or a phased mowing management with or without post-grazing.
Het Icarusblauwtje is het algemeenste blauwtje. De bovenkant van de vleugels is bij het mannetje blauw en bij het vrouwtje bruin. Op de onderkant van de voorvleugel bevinden zich twee vlekken vlakbij de vleugelbasis, waarmee deze soort van alle verwante soorten is te onderscheiden.
Beheer:
Het Icarusblauwtje is een soort van matig voedselrijke, maar bloemrijke graslanden met een gevarieerde vegetatiestructuur met hier en daar open grond. Het behouden of creëren van dit soort graslanden kan best gebeuren via extensieve begrazing of een gefaseerd maaibeheer met of zonder nabegrazing.
Common Starling, Sturnus vulgaris
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The Whistling Kite really didn't pose a threat to the Starling murmuration, the wave simply parted and let the Kite pass through.
A surprise Common Loon near Ottawa. Not a rare species by any means, I just did not expect to see one at this location at this time of year.
A lifer for me, the Common Nighthawk. A nocturnal bird that flies over the tree tops and fields at night chasing bugs and spend their days camouflaged as bumps on branches like this.
Taken in Lichfield, Staffordshire.
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