Alison, I much prefer your latest website. It is so easy to navigate! I'm also looking forward to your bird section developing... which is one of my hobbies. The rarer birds just hate posing!!! You've motivated me to up-date my own website, but I have to depend heavily on my 'never at home' son to help me.

Lovely website--it's the first time I've seen it and really enjoyed it. I particularly liked your high quality photos--must take a lot of patience. Looking forward to seeing your bird pictures too. It is amazing what a bit of water (or in your case, quite a bit of water) and bird feeders can entice even in the big city.

We have squirrels that visit, and I do like watching them but have had to invest in squirrel proof bird feeders as it was proving rather expensive to feed them! What has been harder to find is squirrel feeders where they have to work a bit to get the food. I have found two types, one is really just a box that they have to open, and the other is essentially a corncob on the end of a bungee cord--amusing to watch but perhaps not so much fun for the rather dizzy squirrel. I keep thinking that with some feeders that provide some interest I could get some good squirrel photos, but I'm not too impressed with those available so far. My frogs are still a bit shy in the daytime to pose!

Best wishes with the site.

Kazzie, thanks so much for your comments. Hopefully I will keep up with this website and increase the amount of pictures etc on it. Most of the pics come from my hubbys videos of the garden so I am just waiting to get some stills off the newest ones for the garden birds. I will probably include the squirrels as well as they come to eat as much as the birds. There are three big nests in my sycamore tree and the other day I noticed a magpie trying to get into the top of one nest. The squirrel was racing up the tree and ran so fast along the branch with the nest until he scared the magpie away. He kept running too and fro until the magpie gave up. I wondered if he had been using the nest for himself. Yesterday there were 7 collared doves in the tree. I will miss the bareness when all the leaves come back as all I will see will be a movement on the branches and I will have to guess what has made it. The pond is starting to come back to life now and there is enough watercress for the frogs to spawn in. There have been a couple of days where the frogs were up but it has turned colder and they are now found sprawled out upside down on the bottom of the pond. They look so strange with their arms and legs stretched out. The fish glide straight over the top of them. The golden orfe has really grown and apart from the ghost koi is now the biggest fish in the pond.
Alison

Sorry Chippewacat I didn't mean to ignore you. You must have written yours as I was replying to Kazzie. I'm so glad you liked the site. The squirrels often stay with the birds and can be found on the top of my shed along with a couple of collared doves and the sparrows gaily eating away. It is sometimes amusing to watch them as the squirrel still takes the food and jumps off into the grass and digs a small hole and puts the seed in. He does this for ages and he puts it in the grass, in my plant pots and borders. No matter how much food there is every day he still has to bury some of it. The blackbirds love the apples I put out, but the squirrel is often there taking the apples and he goes up to the sycamore tree climbs onto the bluetit nesting box and sits on top munching away on the apple. He has a very easy life.
Alison

Hi Alison, it looks good. Well done. I love that photo of the frogs!
Have you ever thought of installing a nest box cam? I have just made one using a cheap but focussable security camera with infrared, and am patiently waiting for my first visitor. It was day 4 today, and not a sniff of a feather! Knowing my luck they won't like it, but I live in hope.
By the way, what hardware/software do you use for your video clip (which I couldn't view..)

It sounds a good idea about the nestcam. I will wait to see how you get on with that. Our garden is normally windy and it became so windy that the nest boxes fell off the tree a few months ago so hopefully they have been put up a lot stronger now.(I wondered what it was when I saw this bit of wood in the shrubbery.Luckily they were not nesting at the time.)
I have put a link now to the video clip so that those who can't see it can go to the link and it will open up the window for media player 10 which you can download free of charge and then be able to view the videoclip.(it's worth it if I say so myself !!)
As to the hardware and software we use it comprises of these:

Stills:
Canon 10d (camera)
Sigma 28-135mm (lens)
Sigma 75-300mm
Video:
Canon XM1 4.2-84mm
Canon XL1 5.5-88mm
Canon XL2 5.4-108mm
Sigma 200-972mm
Sigma 540-2100mm

Software:
Adobe Premiere pro (video)
Adobe photoshop (video grabs & stills)
Adobe image ready (convert for web)
Windows media encoder (convert for web)

We have found that although Adobe is not cheap it does the job very well and we have been pleased with the results. I really like the first flower page as everything looks so bright and clear. It is a week now since I started to do this new website. It is amazing how quickly the time goes when you are busy finding pictures and setting them within the programme. So many hours just fly by.
Alison

Alison it's lovely. A joy to navigate, choc full of beautiful photo's and inspirational. It's a wonderful record of all of the activity in your garden. You have given me a kick... next time I'm enjoying the blackbirds squabbling or the frogs croaking, I'll go get my camera!- then of course I can wait 10 years to collate the images :-)
Linda

Day 13 of the website creation and I am going to leave it there for a little while. I have more pics to put in but I will collate them and add them in a few weeks time. Roll on the better weather when more variety of creatures will be available to photograph. Thankyou so much for your lovely comments about it. Don't forget to drop in anytime to see some great pics.
Alison