Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) are shy & very well camouflaged in the wild, It's rare to spot them on the ground & tend to only get noticed when they explode from cover like a squadron of harrier jets.
One could say they are, to use birding terminology a typical LBJ (little brown job).
 Kept tame & well lit by flash even the wild form shows their true beauty & are far from plain.
The above male who was very camera curious shows just how attractive these birds really are.

& his mate (above) shares the same multi hued & patterned plumage but lacks his showy breast & has a speckled breast instead.

Like a lot of once wild birds that have been kept domestically for centuries, man has bred for different plumage colourations & mutations.
The Golden Italian (below) is probably the second most common after the wild & shares the same marking but in a much lighter sandy tone.

Another popular form is the English white.  As its name suggests just plain white although almost all birds have a spot or two of brown usually on or around their heads.  Not as easy to tell the sexes apart but the males have more facial feathering which they use when showing off to the girls. Many breeders prefer white birds for the meat trade as with other poultry & game, the odd feather left on a white bird after plucking doesn't show as much as with darker plumaged birds.

The Spanish or Range quail is a melanistic  form.  Much darker & with completely different markings to the wild & Italian.

 Finally the Pied or Tuxedo.  Another melanistic type but with white breast & facial markings.
A very striking bird in my humble opinion.

These are by no means all of the plumage variations out there.  I have owned cinnamon, & there are also blue mutations.  As they are all the same species cross breeding & the resultant variety can be very interesting.  With certain genes being dominant & others recessive you are never sure what might turn out.
As always right click & view image to see full sized.

A few of my 'well trained' honey bees.  A blend of six different images merged with photoshop5.5.

Sometimes you have to stare into the light.
Willow in Carn Grey quarry & lens flare.
The tree is stretching towards the light & the lighting gives it a facial quality.
Often when I'm shooting mirrors & mandalas the unique way a tree is lit on a particular moment means no two images are the same & many times I've tried & failed to duplicate or improve but the results always differ to the point of frustration.
So now I just treat each image individually & try to find something special that I can highlight or enhance.

The same tree photographed at another time.

The difference a few feet of elevation can make.  & a deal of difference in exposure.
These two images where taken a few days apart & are less than a mile from each other.  But probably two to three hundred feet difference in elevation.  The hawthorn hugs the rock for shelter from the prevailing wind, on top the Green Hill, Carn Grey.  The Hazel Just down the road near Vounder farm.
Near neighbours a world apart.  As always right click to see full size.

Gold Laced Wyandotte Stag (young male).
When I was a kid & coming from a farming family it was rare we didn't go to the annual County agricultural show.  One of the delights for me was always the poultry tent.  The sheer variety in shape size & colour was as fascinating as a trip to an old fashioned sweet shop & the cacophony of poultry noise an atmosphere of its own.  My favourite breed was always the Gold Laced Wyandottes.  Eventually through buying & incubating hatching eggs I've owned a few of these birds, & this dandy was probably one of the best.  The Gold Laced was never a commercial breed for eggs or meat, purely bred for looks & show although pre battery hen days the white wyandotte was an important part of the British egg laying flock.  Finding a good laying strain now would be as easy as finding hens teeth or rocking horse shit.

Fire & Ice by Robert Frost.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.

Plymouth national firework competition August 2007

'Purple Rain'  Prince
 I never meant 2 cause u any sorrow
I never meant 2 cause u any pain
I only wanted 2 one time see u laughing
I only wanted 2 see u laughing in the purple rain

Bird with attitude
Like yesterdays duckpond feeding frenzy normally timid garden birds become quite possessive when at the feeders.  Squabbles are common & even injury occasionally. 
This little blue tit has a look that makes me think he/she can punch above their weight.

Feeding Frenzy.
Take one bag of stale bread, mix with a pond full of normally sedate aquatic birds & sit back & watch some raw animal behaviour. 
Birds can look so cute & fluffy, but at times like this you only have to look in their eyes to see how far they have evolved from their reptile dinosaur cousins.
Not far!

Exmoor ponies conservation grazing at Helman tor November 2006.
A wet & windy day but it shows these beautiful creatures in their element.
The nearest the UK has to a wild horse breed.

When I was a kid these birds where as rare as hens teeth, now they are everywhere.
I think they are striking handsome birds with a very gentle eye.  I love watching them fly over Garker in the Autumn evening dusk on the way to their night-time grazing pastures.

& in contrast to a clear crisp afternoon walk on the Cornish highlands, a misty early morning ride from Pontsmill to Luxulyan.

Standing stones at Carn Grey with the Gribben in the distance.

On the road to Luxulyan past Croft farm.
If you don't love a rainbow you have no soul.

Waterfall at Garker.
A grey wet day at least means more water over the falls & low enough light levels to get a good slow shutter speed.

The Eden Project.
Trying a micro 4/3rds Panasonic GF1 for when I go touring.
It seems strange that the Eden project has been going for fifteen years.