Birds of a feather - and not. feathered

I love the way photography captures things that happen too fast for the eye to perceive, like birds' wings outstretched in flight, and here  the robin's tongue. He'd been standing there on the patio looking very fat and puffed up, and all of a sudden he regurgitated some sort of pellet, and then happily went back to picking up worms.

And an older robin picture...

I mentioned that the collared dove was so hard to capture a good photo of. I thought I had a fairly good one last week, but managed to get a better one today, even though it was through the window.

At some stage in the afternoon I thought I heard C coming home on his motorbike, so I went down to open the back gate - no bike. It was the first distant noises of some helicopters on an advance flight before Obama's visit. I can't add a Black Hawk to my bird collection - I only caught a glimpse of that and a very poor photo, but I did manage a couple of  OK shots of the Chinooks. So different to the usual traffic helicopter and occasional search-and-rescue ones we see. Now that I know what to expect I'll be prepared if I hear them again on Monday, and will try to get a shot that's not taken into the sun.