A female common blackbird (Turdus merula)

I've set my self the task of trying to take digital photos of some laser prints of aerial photos of the hills and valleys behind our house. My archeologist friend Neil had paid for ten prints from English Heritage of different years between 1946 and 1960. I thought that if I made digital copies cheaply with my camera, I could hopefully improve their legibility and be able to zoom in to specific areas we are interested in.

Neil has been exploring the valley behind our house for a couple of years and has made many discoveries. He has tracked back through records, finding maps from the 17th century as well as descriptions of specific properties including their boundaries and ownership. He has been using 'geo-fizz', as seen on Time Team, as well as digging test holes and just walking the land looking for evidence in their features. He has even found roman pottery from the 1st to 3rd century AD and another distinct site with 12th century pottery.

He and I walk about the woods and fields each suggesting our particular take on what we see and know, which is quite informative for us both. I have a completely different training from him so we often come up with quite contradictory theories which we then discuss over a pint in our local.

Sadly I didn't get any good results today from my latest test pictures. I realise I don't fully understand the nature of printed images and how best to make them into pixels. I had hoped to blip one of the maps today, but it will have to wait for better results. By the time I had finished with the tripod, mirror lock-up and various permutations of camera settings, the sun shone weakly over the top of some receding clouds in the south-west.

I went outside and could see that the sunshine would not last for long, so I grabbed more pictures of birds. This female blackbird flew onto several branches of different trees and even let me come up fairly close to it without flying away. It must be hungry. I chose this picture because it shows a bit of the parted clouds, the blue sky beyond, and the muted wintry colours of the branches and shoots of the ash, a vine and a climbing clematis montana, which will be blooming before too long, hopefully.

Have a look at its large feet clinging on the branch.