Feeding frenzy

Staying at my parents again over the bank holiday weekend, to look after the bunnies whilst my mum and dad are away.

Had a nice relaxing hack this morning, the last before our riding holiday - exciting! Back home for lunch and out again to get my hair cut, before coming back once more to attend to the bunnies.

My parents are lucky enought to have blackbirds nesting in the ivy on their garden wall and whilst I was out cleaning out the rabbits hutches I saw Mr and Mrs Blackbird dashing to and fro, fetching nice fresh worms for Blackbird Jr's. They were going for some hours!

After I finished cleaning out the bunnies I decided I would see if I couldn't set up a shot of the blackbirds gathering food. I placed some dried mealworm at an appropriate position on the back lawn and laid flat face down with my camera, awaiting the birds. Unfortunately the blackbirds didn't come down, they kept flying out of the garden and coming back with food - I assume they wanted fresh, live worms, rather than dried ones.

But after around 10-15 minutes of lying there, I noticed that the starlings seemed rather keen to investigate - once one took the plunge and tried some they all followed, with 10 - 15 at a time jostling for position on the lawn and fighting amongst themselves. And as quickly as they arrived all of the mealworm had gone and they disappeared.

I managed to rapidly fire off several series of shots as they came, fed and left. They were quite obliging and the sound of the shutter didn't seem to upset them - they jumped when I first took a shot but very soon realised I meant them no harm. When my neck had finally had enough of the awkward position I had to put it in, I packed up and went inside, leaving the small amount of mealworm left in the bag for them to help themselves without me watching.

Processing wise, most done in Photoshop again but finished in Lightroom:
Started with an all over levels adjustment, before adding a curves layer on the foreground grass to darken it down and help push the eye into the frame. Finished with some noise reduction and sharpening.

Fingers crossed I'll be able to move my neck tomorrow.