Garden birds are often more tame than their counterparts in the wild. Whenever I got too close to this male great tit at Broadwater Warren  it would fly to another branch and continue its singing. Each time the bird moved, I had to find a new angle from which to take its photograph so that various bits of tree weren’t blocking my view. I took the photograph on 7 April 2013 which is why there are no leaves on the tree.

For the final photograph I removed several distractions from the background in Photoshop Elements.

As I was walking through the large vegetable garden at Commonwork on 20 April 2013, I heard the flap of wings and realised that this sparrowhawk had just landed next to a hedge full of sparrows. After taking a couple of photographs through the wire of the chicken pen, I slowly crept to a position where I could get a clear view.

I managed to get a couple of photographs before two men ambled through the garden deep in conversation. The sparrowhawk took a look at them and decided to fly away.

These double-helix slopes no longer feel the parade of penguins walking along them as the penguins have moved to the new Penguin Beach at ZSL London Zoo. The original Penguin Pool is a Grade 1 listed building and was built in 1934. However, whilst the Modernist design may have aesthetic appeal, reinforced concrete is no longer considered a suitable material for penguins.

As for the photograph, I cropped the original into a square, used the grain filter in Photoshop Elements to add the texture followed by the clone tool to remove some highlights and distractions before darkening the edges and corners.

In 2013, the Tiger Territory exhibit opened at ZSL London Zoo (ZSL being the Zoological Society of London) and this is one of their Sumatran tigers.

I was travelling light so I only had my 70-300mm Sigma lens attached to my Nikon D5000 camera, the tiger was on the far side of the enclosure and there was a sheet of glass between us. Despite the distance, it still thought we were worthy of consideration maybe with the hope of adding us to its lunchtime menu.

I was sitting in a bank in Tonbridge when I noticed that this to-do list that was unlikely to get done as it had been left behind by a previous customer. As I didn’t have my proper camera with me, I used my mobile phone to take a photograph of it.

I don’t know whether the list was retrieved by its author, but I do hope that they managed to booked their car in for an MOT and that Trevor received his DVD.

I’ve been wearing glasses every day for more than 20 years. When I ordered this pair of Lindberg glasses from Wilkinsons in Tonbridge, I was asked if I’d like my name laser-etched on to the frame. My doubts were assuaged when they told me it was included in the price.

For the photograph I placed the glasses on a piece of white board near the patio doors for natural light and used my 18-55mm lens. I wanted to have a record of the glasses whilst they were still in pristine condition as previous pairs of my glasses have been dropped, scratched, chipped, sat upon and trodden on.

Wrens are small birds that don’t stay still for long so I was lucky that this one landed on a perch when I was taking photographs at Commonwork. I’d spotted a house sparrow searching for food on a vegetable patch in the charity’s organic garden. So I sat down on a tractor tyre that was being used as a flower bed and waited to see what turned up. Over the following few minutes, the house sparrow was replaced by this wren which in turn was followed by a dunnock and a robin.

When I visited Commonwork on 16 February 2013, I was fortunate to find this kestrel perched in a tree. In my first and second photographs it was staring intently at the ground, presumably because it had its eye on something interesting and edible. In the third and fourth photographs, it was looking at me as I moved closer to get a better view.  I then trod on a branch which cracked very loudly. At this point the kestrel flew away, along with my chance for more photographs.

It was cold and cloudy on the first Saturday in February 2013 so I wasn’t expecting to see many birds at Sevenoaks Wildlife Reserve. However, after trying to take photographs of long-tailed tits in some trees I found myself at the edge of the East Lake.

Above the lake were a large flock of, well I didn’t know what they were but there were a lot of them so I aimed my 150mm-500mm lens towards the sky and started taking photographs. The flock flew back and forth in a beautiful and coordinated way and there were so many birds that my camera had no real trouble with focussing on them.

Once at home I looked at the pictures and compared them with my identification book and various web sites. My best guess was that they were little ringed plovers but I was far from certain. Once again I turned to the RSPB Identify This forum where I was told that the birds were lapwings (which are a type of plover, so I was half-right).

In this photograph the birds were flying from right to left so I flipped it round in Photoshop Elements and removed a bird that, through cropping, I’d chopped in half.

Considering there are several million wild rabbits in the UK, I’d expect to see them more frequently. I found this one by the side of a path at Sevenoaks Wildlife Reserve on 26 January 2013. It didn’t seem too concerned by my presence as it chewed its way through the vegetation and I was able to get quite close for this photograph.

In Photoshop Elements I darkened the edges along with a few bright areas to help concentrate the viewer’s attention on the main subject: the rabbit.