Hayle Estuary Wildlife

While waiting for many hours for the Osprey featured in the previous blog I spent much of my time snapping away on the variety of wildlife that passes through Hayle Estuary over time and decided to produce this additional blog of some of the images captured

Shell Duck.

Whimbrel.

Cormorant.

Little Egret.

Black-tailed Godwit

Grey Heron

Canada Goose

Yesterdays South coast encounters

First up was an early encounter with this fine looking dog fox foraging through coastal rocks along the shoreline,

A male Peregrine devouring a starling while scattering its plucked feathers over the rocks

Having eaten her prey the female peregrine was regurgitating the waste products which always looks like a rather uncomfortable procedure but it is very important for them to remove indigestible matter.

A very familiar sighting of a Little Egret fishing along the marsh margins at Marazion

A  Male Canada goose displaying to its mate

The inevitable scraps between dominant males

A more peaceful shot of a pair of Canada geese relaxing at the margins in the evening sun

And finally a pair of somewhat rarer Gadwall in their winter colours made a trip along warren waters to complete the day

The light at Marazion marsh can be a cracking spot for Photography during sunny afternoons but it does often require some patients while waiting for a show from interesting wildlife subjects and their behaviour.

Hayle Estuary and Ryan's field yesterday

This colourful female Kingfisher was showing quite well on Ryans field this morning and it managed to arrive with a little sunshine to bring out its colours.

A Little Egret produced a nice rippled silhouette as it fished between the reeds in the water between Ryan's field hide and the causeway and it caught a nice big shrimp for its breakfast

On the causeway several Lapwing were bathing  at the waters edge and feeding on the mudflats and a few filtered rays of the sun just about managed to highlight their iridescent red and green flight feathers

The very vocal Black headed gulls always create an interest with their surface diving behaviour

This ever present Curlew seemed like a big bird fishing in a very small pond but it came away with a
beak full of muddy worm which it seemed pleased to toss down its throat,  Each to their own !!

High flying Buzzard and Rabbits

A high flying Buzzard descends over Marazion Marsh sending a few Little Egret and several ducks off in a bit of a panic.

The buzzard seemed to have its eye on a few young rabbits that were sunbathing on the warren but they had seen it all before and held their ground while keeping an eye on it.

The Buzzard landed close to the rabbits and proceeded to hop around on the cut grasses perhaps having seen a vole or some other potential prey.

Now when it comes to Grass hopping rabbits are specialist and a couple of them put on a display for the Buzzard to show it how it should be done

The buzzard was visually up set with all of this 'Extracting the Michael' and departed to look for a more easily impressible audience

Easter Bunny

'I dropped into Marazion Marsh early Am and one of the first subjects that came up in my viewfinder was the cute little Easter Bunny pictured above.

Other subjects included several pairs of Moorhen,  The resident Mute Swans have built this years nest in open view on one of the small islands.

Three Little Egret were all busy fishing along the warren water margins.

Several Pair s of Grey Heron were coming and going to tree nests along the railway line.

And as I left I disturbed an unseen Buzzard on the ground of the rabbit warren that resettled on one of the distant railway signal assemblies waiting for me to leave,

Little Egret Study

When I arrived at Ryan's Field on the Hayle estuary this morning I could see the above distant Little Egret resting up in the reed beds close to the river bank to the left hand side of the hide.

There was nothing special about that but the intermittent bright sunshine on the fields behind the river was throwing its reflection across the shaded water where the bird was resting to create this green water effect while leaving the egrets own reflection unaffected,

I decided to exit the hide and moved slowly along the river to see what else I could achieve with this bird which as I did so moved out across an adjacent pond to fish,

 I  followed it for around twenty minutes picking off shots of its fishing technique and reflections as I inched closer until with several Three Spin Sticklebacks dispatched it returned to the river bank to rest up again.