Mistle Thrush

Maybe I'm alone on this one, but until last week, I've never got within 50 paces of a Mistle Thrush before. I don't know whether they have a personal thing with me, or whether my fieldcraft is just crap, but it seems that even before my brain is able to process the image of a large speckled thrush in front of me, the bird has usually ascended 30 foot high into some highly branched Oak tree, where the chance of a photograph is smaller than the chance of it coming down to eat worms out of my hand (not that I make a habitat of keeping worms in my hand).

It came as a surprise then- whilst munching on a very expensive ham and cheese panini in the Woodland Gardens area of Bushy Park- when a Mistle Thrush decided to burst through the undergrowth and land on a tree banch metres from my face. I was afraid to pick up my camera at first, thinking it was going to bug off as soon as it realised I was looking at it. Instead, it sat there for a further 30 seconds, and I finally got my first ever shots of a Mistle Thrush...

Unfortunatly, it didn't seem too keen on the worms in my hand.