Cloud Covered Heath

Low cloud and rain stopped the show of Short Eared Owls on the west Cornish heathland for most of the afternoon yesterday

At 3 PM the low clouds gave way to sunshine and I was treated to a close Take-off sequence from a bird that had been hunkered down out of sight in a large tuft of rough grass,

It then recommenced its hunting activities while hovering on a stiff westerly wind and quickly took another vole for its efforts as it went back to hiding in the rough grasses to consume it.

At 3.45 the clouds more low clouds came racing back in and the hunting grounds were lost in the mist once again !    But the Owl had his Vole and I had a few more Shortie shots in my memory card.

Stithians Southern Cut-off yesterday

 A visit to Stithians Southern cut-off hide to duck out of the wind and rain proved to be Quite a productive morning with all the usual birds making a good show around the feeding station.

I was working with my new Nikon D500 DX camera body looking to obtain full frame portraits of small birds in the low light levels that were prevailing at the time so it was a bit of a challenge for the camera.

I was using my 500mm F4 lens with a 1.7 Tele-converter fitted which on the DX D500 body gave me a reach of 1275mm and I was pleased with the close-focus Portraits posted below and the cameras low light performance while working on ISO 6400

Dipper, Taking a Dip!

We had been watching the Dipper busy diving and feeding for well over an hour at Kennell Vale yesterday when it took some time out for a lot of preening and bathing,  I could understand the preening but why bathing when it had just spent half of the last hour underwater anyway ?

 It was very serious about its cleaning and made an impressive amounts of splashing for quite a small bird as it repeated this exercise around twenty times before moving to a larger rock for some more preening and ear scratching at a leisurely pace,

It then moved off around the waterfalls picking off small insects at the waters edge to finish its day but without resorting to any more diving activities after its clean up,

We were hoping to record more interaction and perhaps even mating by these birds which have a well recorded nest site in the vicinity, But,  No one could have been disappointed with the behaviour display that this active little Dipper produced yesterday !!   But perhaps another day !