Mistle thrush nest

from this afternoon, chanced upon this nest on sunday, was casually watching a pair of these on the way to somewhere when one flew across the street and landed in this nest
made a mental note of the location and returned today armed with a step ladder,

40D + 300 + 1.4x
1/125 @ F5.6
ISO 640
FULL FRAME

A nice, intimate family portrait, and an opportunity well taken. I can see a stepladder is yet another item I need to add to my ever-bulging camera bag!

You were very lucky to get this ! They are usually very skittish.
I presume you had some sort of hide over yourself ?
Nice and early one too !
Cheers
JohnR

Yes Mistle thrushes can be dumb where they site their nests, we had one in the centre of Reading a few years ago in a small open tree next to a pavement. However......

My main question is why did you have a need or urge to do this? Nest photography is a taboo subject these days, it nearly always breaches the over riding principle of nature photography that the welfare of the subject comes first.

As John says I hope you used a hide of some sort rather than just shinnny up a ladder.

Sorry but the risk of disturbance to the birds is just too great to justify a shot like this. The welfare of the wildlife must always come first. Very irresponsible behaviour in my book.

I wasn’t aware this was going to be such a contentious image; I have seem several images on this site of woodpeckers nests which have not been questioned in the least. I should perhaps have better explained the circumstances of the image. The nest is located in a tree on the pavement of a residential street right next to a high street in Hackney, East London. The birds were foraging in a park commonly used by a lot of people (in fact at one point I saw one of the parents being approached by a dog, which it allowed within a few metres before hopping out of the way a little). I appreciate that mistle thrushes may normally be very skittish but there is a huge difference between urban and rural birds. Like I say cars and people go right by under the tree constantly all day and everyday, habituation like that has resulted in the birds having little to no concern for humans, as you can see despite this constant human presence the chicks have already progressed to a stage where they can be recognised as thrushes. Despite this I would like to add that I was on the pavement on the other side of the road from the nest with a camouflage net, I was certainly not right up to the nest (the lens combination I have described is 672mm in 35mm). In the course of photographing the birds they seemed to exhibit normal behaviour regularly bringing worms to the chicks, in short i don’t believe that I disturbed them. I appreciate from the original description someone might conclude that I was right up next to the birds in some bush getting in their face, however If you were to see the circumstances I’m sure you would draw a different conclusion.

I hope this has cleared it up somewhat,

Cheers

Jack

Hi Jack,
Its a nice image, and I would agree that the birds don't seem too upset in the photo, otherwise the parents would not come to the nest for fear of revealing it to the presumed predator.
Adam

Hi jack
Fair enough.
I must say though that if you sat on a step ladder on the pavement with a camo net over yourself around here you'd be inside fairly quickly !!!
Cheers
JohnR

I really like this, I think its because you don't see this sort of photography even on very common birds. I don't know why as it all ways works in my eyes!