I had been a little bit tempted to call the photo of bees‘Bonking Bees’ but as it was entered into a Natural History Competition, you have to be sensible about your titles and so it was called “Mating Bumble Bees”.  The judge thought that I had used a macro lens when in fact I’d used my 200mm telephoto lens.  The photo was taken on 31st May 2010, in the woods next to Strathpeffer Golf Course.  Allistar spotted the bees and I felt sure by the time I’d be ready for my shot they’d have stopped.  Pretty happy with the results though.

The photo of the Red Squirrel on the feeder was entered into an Open competition.  I took the photo when Allistar and I had travelled to Aberdeen for a weekend for his birthday in July 2010.  We stopped off at the Huntley Peregrine Wild Watch, which is run by the Forestry Commission.  Whilst Allistar was looking through his binoculars at the birds I took dozens of photographs of the red squirrals and birds that were making the most of all the feeders that they’d set up next to the bird hide.  I like this one best though as it is almost like he’s posting a letter.  Very cute.

I entered the photograph of Rust into the Mini Competition where you had to put a photo of Rust, a photo of Rain and a photo of Rubbish in.  This was obviously my Rust picture.  The judge really liked this shot and gave me 19 out of 20 for it!  Unfortunately I hadn’t realised that you were supposed to put all 3 shots in until the night of submitting our entries, so that night I had to take a last minute photo of rubbish, which was literally a rubbish photo, and so that scored only 15 out of 20 and my rain shot scored 17 out of 20.  I think if I’d done a better ‘rubbish’ shot then I could have won the competition, but never mind.  Anyway because the judge was so complementary about the photo, I decided to enter it into one of the  general competition as well and it received a credit.

I haven’t yet chosen my shots for competition entries for 2011-12 season but will post on here any that I receive a credit for.