Female Kestrel Portraits

This set of Female Kestrel images were taken this morning while we both waited for the male to re-enter the location to mate with the female as posted in the previous blog,

Kestrels are one of my favorite birds around the coast of Cornwall and I am always happy to spend what ever time it takes with them to capture their general behaviour,

Mating Kestrels

With a cold north wind blowing from the north I decided to work my way along part of the south coast this morning on the lookout for some Kestrel mating behaviour at a location where I had worked with them recently.

I was not to be disappointed as the birds at my first stop were looking promising but with two aborted attempts time was eventually running out when this fine pair of birds got it all together in a prominent position at a reasonable distance.

Due to the birds selected mating position which was unfortunately shaded I ended up on ISO 1400 to compensate exposure for my 850mm lens set at minimum F6.7 and 1/3200 sec to freeze the action over distance but I ran off a total of 132 images of the mating sequence at 12 frames a second all of which were sharp except for the last male exit shot so I was a happy bunny !!

Raven Fledglings

An early morning visit to a Raven nest site proved fruitful with the sunlight penetrating the dark shadows to the back of the nest.

The two larger birds do not look far from fledging and are busy conducting wing exercises towards that end.

They are getting bolder and calling to the adult birds on a regular basis and will soon be joining them to patrol the skies along the south cornish coastline

Grey Heron Take-off Reflections

Dark clouds formed a dramatic and somber looking sunrise over Marazion marsh early AM yesterday on what was otherwise a very still morning.

These conditions were a bit challenging on exposures and shutter speeds but they also helped to create the interesting set of take-off reflections from one of the resident Grey Heron posted below.

From its short flight the same bird also produced a very graceful landing for what can sometimes be a very lanky looking bird,

When I left the marsh heading off along the south coast the resident female Mute Swan was already busy turning her eggs and the warren rabbits were doing what rabbits do best !!   So all was looking well with Marazion marsh.

Buzzard Hot Spot

I quite regularly see behaviour from a common subject that I have never seen before and the image above captures just that !

I was watching Buzzards circling in a blue sky which was peppered with Cotton wool clouds and on three occasions in around two hours I watched one of the Buzzards descend onto a south facing rock ledge when the sun came clear of the clouds. It left again twice as soon as clouds re-shaded the cliff.

The sequence of images below show the bird arriving on the ledge, spread its wings wide and flattening its entire body against the same area of bare, dark and warm rock face for ten to twenty minutes at a time only to leave again as the cliff went into cloud shadow,

I have to assume that the bird was demonstrating this behaviour in order to bring up its body temperature with warmth from the sunshine on a ledge that was also protected from the prevailing wind,  There was no stashed prey, nest or chicks on the ledge to be guarded and the birds wing spread was at full stretch on each occasion,

On this third occasion the sunny period was quite long and the bird left while in full sunlight which enabled me to complete this sequence with the take off images.

So perhaps this truly is a Buzzard Hot Spot !!

Wheatear Close Encounter

Bob and I had a brief close encounter with a  Wheatear pm yesterday, It came within ten metres of us as we walked a field and stayed just long enough to display a little feeding behaviour as it took a lively caterpillar from the rough grass in front of us,

After eating it posed very nicely for a minute or so before it was off again looking for more !!