On Guard.

Surprised how well this came out as this male tree sparrow was on guard outside his nest well up in the tree, so it was on full zoom to get him this close and very windy - the Canon's shake tolerance triumphs again!

He seemed to be particularly upset by the house sparrows who were feeding a brood of newly fledges chicks in the tree and kept chaseing them off before returning to his post.

Tree Sparrows have been in decline and through various projects I have managed to get lots of nest boxes up for them around Angus. On this farm they are not only nesting in natural holes such as this, they are also using the nestboxes and so hopefully the population is increasing.