Buzzard -Inflight

I returned to the Ashton Buzzard fields yesterday hoping to introduce my buddy Peter Tonkin to the quality of show that the buzzards produced on the previous Saturday afternoon but it was not to be!

I guess that  'Nobody told the Buzzards'   We waited for best part of three hours without a sighting  and then one appeared in the distance heading towards their favoured power cable post and having watched many landings there on my previous visit I had time to set up for the landing sequence montage posted above.

Below are a couple of the portrait images used in the montage:

The bird seemed to take a while to settle on the power cable post but eventually dropped down to a lower level to perch on one of the horse grazing field fence posts and I thought this was going to be the start of the buzzards lob worm hunting displays.

Not so,  The bird took a long look around while calling and then took off presumable looking for greener pastures.

I was pleased with my take-off portraits and managed to put together the tight sequence montage posted below but I was a little disappointed that the birds didn't produce the quality performance of my previous visit for Peter to experience but as we all know: 

                                            'That's the way it goes with Wildlife Photography'

Another Roe Deer surprise

On the 24th August I reported my surprise at sighting a doe Roe Deer that had been unseen since early June suddenly reappearing with a two month old Kid.

Well early AM today she treated me to another surprise by this time reappearing with twins.

I don't know where she has been hiding them but it was a joy to see them out foraging on dot leaves in the middle of the field

Not perhaps the best of images below but it was good to see that the doe was still supplementing the kids diet with occasional suckling.

It looked like this pair of kids were double trouble,  One minute they were both together with mum and the next they were at opposite ends of the field and tending to give the doe a bit of a run around while trying to keep a eye on both at the same time.

In the image above she had just caught up with one of them and was then immediately stretching her neck high in the long grass looking for number two and I had to smile when number one in the image below aped its mothers behaviour and started looking as well.

Buzzard take-offs

On a saturday my wife Heather collaborates with friends and potters Sally and Hazel at their pottery in Ashton while building work experience as part of her second year BA (Hons) Textile Design course at Falmouth University.

This Saturday I received a call from the ladies saying that buzzards were being sighted regularly in the fields adjacent to the pottery so I popped along to see what they were all about.

There was nothing special about my first couple of  ' POST EAGLE'  images that every tourist points out when visiting Cornwall apart from the fact that this looked like a dodgy landing post but the birds proved to be very used to settling on this high voltage vantage point before moving down into the fields below

These buzzards proved to be very frequent visitors and my interest grew as they spent their whole time here hunting in the well grazed fields.

Some times they dropped straight down into the field while more regularly opting to land on fence post vantage points first always watchful for any intrusion before dropping onto their prey which consisted mainly of large Lob worms.

Over the next three hours I was treated to thirty + Take off images some of which are posted below as portraits while others lent themselves so well to Montage Take-off composits

Most of their prey seemed to be Lob worms but on two occasions they turned their attentions to a couple of rather relaxed looking rabbits.

                        'Guess who is coming for Dinner'                   or                   'He is behind You !!'


Many thanks to Hazel and Sally for hosting this shoot.

Roe Deer Kid revisited

With a fine weather forecast today I decided to make another early visit to the deer fields at longrock hoping to re-capture yesterdays doe Roe Deer and Kid in better light levels and  I was so pleased to come away with the image posted below.

But it did not come together in a straight forward manner :

The doe and her kid were already out feeding when I arrived in the dark at five thirty but it was to dark to take any images so I just tracked them around the field until after six o clock when I decided to set up my camera at an optimum shooting location.

Looking back across the field I could not find the deer that had done another of their disappearing acts on me again so I decided to wait to see if they might return.

The time ticked by until after seven am when my binoculars picked up a pair of ears moving in a hedgerow lit by first rays of the morning sunshine and then I saw a larger pair a few metres from the first.

So the deer had not left but simply hunkered down in the long grasses of a distant hedgerow and not for the first time I was now in the wrong location  to work with them.

I relocated to a better position in what was now a fine sunny morning and waited to take some images that were not just a pair of ears and finally at 7.45 the doe and then her kid both rose up to continue their day while affording me a bunch of images for fifteen minutes in far better conditions than yesterday.

The doe eventually lead her kid away back into the adjoining woodlands but not without leaving me with my first Roe Deer & Kid portrait of the year that is feature at the start of this blog.                                                                                   Happy Days!!

South coast Peregrines

On the south coast I spotted one of our local female Peregrines chilling out and settled down to watch it but within ten minutes her peace was disturbed by this years fledgling which flew in screaming  to be fed !

With a bit of reluctance the female stretched her wings and limbered up for a minute or so before finally taking to the air while providing me with a nice take-off sequence of images to present here today.

Once in the air this female who is a superb hunter and provider of prey to her young soon gained height and speed as she disappeared out of sight along the coastal cliff tops in search of her next prey victim !!

Longrock Roe deer and Kid

It was a dreary dawn here in west Cornwall but I decided to look out for the local Roe Deer at Longrock before heading off westwards along the south coast,

Earlier in the summer I had been watching a pregnant Doe in this area but it seemed to disappear during mid June around the time that her kid should be born.

Weeks of occasional watching revealed nothing but today,  Two months later !  Here was the doe and her two month old kid out grazing in the field,

They were four hundred metres from me and light levels required slow camera shutter speed and high ISO but I was so delighted to see them,  Took on the challenge and did the best I could to record the sighting

They were quite relaxed until the doe picked up on my shutter firing while taking the image above and from that moment after looking around she started to slowly guide the kid back towards the hedgerow.

The doe spent a few minutes browsing the hedgerow with the kid tagging along behind and then following taking the image below they just melted out of sight through the undergrowth into the woodland behind before the sun had even risen.

Millpool life today,

An old Cock Pheasant that was the king pin for calling for and mating with most of the females that showed in his field adjacent to the Millpool through the summer seems to have lost his prowess.

His call is depleted and all of his fine tail feathers are now missing in fact you could say that he looks a shadow of his former self apart from the fact that he has certainly put on weight

When a female shows its now what used to be the second in command that takes over and rushes in to service the females invitation to mate.

So it looks like                 'Every Pheasant has their Day before they fade away'


For the second time in the last couple of weeks I found another male Southern Hawker dragonfly  that was perched high in a willow tree.

I waited for a bit more action but with the temperature on the low side and a cloudy sky it did n't look like this dragonfly was going anywhere so I moved in for a close-up portrait  before getting back to my fishing.

Back at my swim this Comma butterfly paid me a very brief visit before moving on around the Millpool vegetation.