Iain Leitch Photography

Due to the pandemic we currently all live in it's important to be careful when you are going out taking photos as you should be avoiding people as much as possible. The other day I went to a conservation area near me that was completely void of any other person which meant that the birds were out in force. I first two photos are of a pair of White-Breasted Nuthatches that were building a nest. The first photo is just of the Nuthatch sitting on a branch staring up into the sky. What I find interesting in this photo is that the beak of the Nuthatch is actually turned upwards which is something I did not know before I took this photo.  The second photo is the same Nuthatch as the one above flying away. I always like photos of birds taking flight. It is also interesting to see that the talons on the Nuthatch are quite large due to it needing the grip when it is climbing down a tree.  The final photo is from a week ago. I took this photo when I was still living in ...

A couple of days ago it was a fairly nice day and I needed to get out of the house and away from the papers, I was working on. During my walk, I saw very few birds but the ones I did see I managed to get a picture of.  The first photo in this post is of a black-capped chickadee, these are my favourite birds due to a number of different reasons they are also one of the easiest birds to find in my opinion, and they are also not afraid of humans so it is easy to get close to them for photos. This chickadee was almost on ground level beside a trail when I saw him and managed to photograph him before he moved deeper into the bush.  The next bird that I saw was new to me, I had seen these birds before on the way to Trent but never managed to grab a photo of one. This bird is a bufflehead, normally they do not live in and around Peterborough but during the later winter, they can be seen here as they make their way up north. This bufflehead was all alone and was just swimmi...

My first Snowy Owl pictures. I think they turned out pretty good, I know they won't win any awards but I am still proud of them given the circumstances of the photo. I just got home for reading break for a week, and my family and I had gone out for lunch in a town nearby. As we were driving home I spotted a white ball of fluff sitting on top of a telephone pole and promptly made my dad pull over so I could get out and try to get a photo. I thought that like a hawk as soon as I had exited the car the bird would have flown away but instead it just sat there ignoring me the whole time I was taking its photo. It glanced down at me every now and then but nothing more than to see what I was doing, and to see if, in fact, I was still there. I decided I shouldn't push my luck and returned to the car to leave the bird be, but that was also due to the wind chilling me to the bone.  Here are two photos of the snowy owl that I took, on top of the telephone pole somewhere in Perth County...

This is my first blog post of 2020 so I want to start off by wishing my readers a happy new year. This photo I took while out on a walk at a local conservation area and doesn't actually go with the theme of backyard birds but I just wanted to add it to this post as I enjoy this photo of the hollow log. When I went home for Christmas break I was finally able to properly use the 70-300mm lens I got for my birthday and give it a good test. Boy did it do well. Previously with my Canon Rebel T5, I had a canon 70-300mm lens and I was always unhappy with the pictures I took from my backdoor as they never seemed close enough. However, with this lens, it seems to do much better. The following two photos are of the same Dark-eyed Junco but just different pictures of it. To get these photos I would wait at my backdoor until a bird appeared then slowly open my back door and snap a couple photos. This photo of an American Tree Sparrow (also known as a Winter Sparrow) is what ...

Today as I was driving to go do some shopping in London I saw this Red-tailed Hawk sitting on a telephone wire by the side of the road. I turned the car around and pulled over to start taking photos of it through the car window. The photo below is actually the last photo I took as it was about to fly off but I thought it was rather cool with the open wings. It shows just how big of a bird it actually is. The bottom two photo is more or less the same but I guarantee that they are actually different. These two are, just photos of the hawk sitting on the wire looking directly at me with some pretty intense eye contact.  I like the background of this series of photos are it is a neutral calming colour that adds to the photo but doesn't take anything away from the detail on the hawk.