Cornish Kestrels part 29

As our young kestrel fledglings reach fourteen days old I managed to take my first images of one of them near the front of their obscured nest site as it watched the female kestrel fly off to collect more prey,

Providing nothing untoward happens within the next fourteen days and the adult birds keep up their good work in the supply of prey our young birds will finally fledge to explore the amazing Cornish coastline that will become their home,

Cornish Kestrels part 21

Focus on the Male Kestrel,

The female Kestrel has had the lions share of my blog since it was first published back on the fifth of February this year, This has been mainly due to the fact that the female tends to spend more time around the nest site area during the build up to the incubation period and is still able to forage for her own prey if it is not forthcoming from the male, prey hand overs and mating tend to occur more randomly over a larger area so that the photography is more difficult to bring together, Things change at the start of the incubation period which begins some time around the laying of the fourth egg at which time the female will not want to leave her eggs, So she now needs the male to bring prey to the nest site to hand over to her,  This year our incubation period started just five days ago on the 13th April and we now have a total of six eggs under incubation

So our male Kestrel below has been more in focus over the last few days and bringing prey to the female on a more regular basis

   

Mating still continues even though the pair now have a full clutch of eggs,  Six is the maximum number of eggs recorded over the last six years.  The male will often hang around after a prey delivery looking to mate with the female before she returns to her eggs and he will then be off hunting again,

Today was a good day for mating images with four such events recorded during a four hour period and as we are focusing on the male I included this close portrait shot of him in action,  lovely bird !

And so when the fun is all over he will be off foraging for more prey to keep his new family going.

Cornish Kestrels part 20

Cornish Kestrel,

It was a grey overcast morning today which can make it difficult to record images of our kestrel within their over shadowed scrape so if the following images look a bit like a black cat in a coal shed you will know the reason why,  They have all been taken on ISO 6400 to try to obtain some sort of reasonable shutter speed but enough excuses:  here they are !

The first image shows our female Katie looking quite comfortable sitting on her eggs

Around thirty minutes later she moved off of the eggs for a stretch and I was delighted to see that her egg count has risen to five speckled beauties,

She was heading back to the eggs within a few minutes and stayed on them until I left around an hour later

It is quite normal for kestrel to delay incubation of their eggs until after the forth one is laid but it is also nice to eventually see them settle down to the task,  Three years ago the first four eggs were all laid during a cold spell of weather and the outcome was that only the last laid fifth and sixth eggs hatched  Here's hoping all will be well this year !

There was no sign of the male bird during this visit but that is not unusual either.

Reed nesting Heron revisited

Reed nesting Heron revisited

Back on the 10th February I published a blog relating to Grey Heron nesting behaviour at Marazion marsh,  Yesterday I returned to check out their progress and was pleased to see a couple young Heron heads bobbing about just above the top of the nest,

I decided to wait to try to capture some feeding behaviour then the adult birds returned and in the mean time the young birds became more active as they became more hungry and provided me with a few more full portrait images, wing flapping exercises and as they became even more hungry over the next hour one young bird was begging for food from the other.

Both of the adult birds were busy fishing around the margins of the marsh during this period with the female looking good during a brief show of sunshine,

She was the first to fly to the nest to feed the young birds about One and a half hours after my arrival. She kept her head high perhaps to avoid the two jabbing beaks that were being thrust towards her  head, this made the young birds stretch to maximum height while calling for food,

The female departed to continue fishing as soon as both youngsters had been fed and about fifteen minutes later the Male adult returned to the nest with more food,

As the male arrives at the nest we once again have a repeat performance with the young birds stabbing at the Male's beak and head while he holds his head high forcing them to stretch for food,

Both birds seemed to be content at this stag even if they do have a face that "Only a Mother could love"

Like the female the male flies off to resume fishing for the next meal,   All in all this feeding activity was a joy to spend time watching for a couple of hours while most visitors rushed by to catch a boat across to St Michel's Mount paying them no heed!

Cornish Kestrels part 19

I was back at the Kestrel site for sunrise this morning and am pleased to report that our Kestrels now have three speckled brown eggs in their scrape.

The female was perched close by and as I took a few shots her eyes went up to the sky,  She had seen the male coming back with prey this gave me time to grab a few aerial shots of his approach.

 The male kestrel had returned with a common lizard that he delivered direct to the female.

After a brief rest he was on his way again while providing me with a series of nice take-off shots from which I produced the montage image below.

Cornish Kestrel part 17

Male Kestrel with prey

The bright sunshine continued on through yesterday so having returned home for breakfast after my early morning trip to the kestrels and a chat about the ongoing day with my wife Heather we both decided to return during the afternoon.   It was only around ten minutes after are arrival that the male kestrel flew in with a writhing common lizard in one of its talons which he duly passed over to the female on the nest

I was pleased to capture this flight image below as he immediately departed the nest

He flew onto a nearby ledge perhaps checking me out and I could see that he had sustained a little wing feather damage probably while catching the lizard but in general all is looking good for a nice brood of fledglings again this year,

Cornish Kestrel part 16

Kestrel sun rise !

I made an early visit to our Kestrels today looking to make the most of the lovely morning light,  As soon as I arrived I could see that Katie was perhaps sitting on an egg on her concealed scrape looking quite relaxed,

Around thirty minutes later she rose for a stretch to reveal one lovely speckled brown egg beneath her and called to her mate presumably for breakfast,

Not for the first time she looked beautiful basking in the morning sun while watching me watching her,

The next 10 days could see as many as five more eggs added to the single one showing in the rounded scrape behind her in the final image below,

Perhaps not the final image for as I prepared to leave the cove a pod of around seven feeding bottlenose dolphin including at least one youngster past by, The shot was taken hand held with the dolphin around 400m away using my 500mm lens  + 1.4 converter so not perhaps the best image ever but good enough to set the scene of a lovely spring morning,

What a cracking way to start a new day !

Stithians today

There were a couple of birds present at Stithians southern cut-off hide today that I had not worked with at this location before. The first was a very shy Jay that seemed to arrive at the same time as the male Great Spotted Woodpecker which was not impressed and departed post haste,  The Jay seemed concerned about the hide so I closed all but one small viewing slot and waited quietly and it slowly moved out of cover enough for a clear image and eventually on to the ground to forage under the feeders. Nice bird !

My second new photo opportunity came from a very active Wren which I have seen here before but this was the first time that it spent long enough to achieve the  portrait image below.

 

There was no sight or sound of our usually busy and often noisy Little Grebes out on the water but there was a lone Cormorant fishing and I wondered was there a connection or a threat by the Cormorant's presence to the Little Grebes,  Checking along the margins I found the answer in a very quiet Little grebe hiding within the reeds

As soon as the Cormorant had finished fishing and departed the grebes were back on the case and soon catching plenty of Sticklebacks again

Other resident birds were showing as usual and it was nice to see a Goldfinch feeding on Pussy Willow instead of sunflower hearts

Of which the Reed Bunting below seems to have had more than his share

This image of the male Great Spotted Woodpecker was taken as it was stretching its neck to check out the unappreciated  arrival of the above Jay

Cornish Kestrel part 14

     As I walked down through the coastal fields this morning I could see Kate our female Kestrel long before I arrived,  She was using the cliff face updraught to hang on the wing for some energy saving  hunting in a light southerly wind.

I went down through the cliffs to a lower level to gain some shelter and worked my way to one of my preferred viewing points and Kate came down and perched close by,  I thought she was just being sociable until I realised that she was not watching me but a busy little Rock pipit hunting for insects among washed up kelp snipes on the shore,

It is quite rare to see many small birds in this area and also to see the local kestrels predating on them  when vole, lizard and slow worms are in such abundance  I could also tell by the blood stain on Kate's chest that she had already eaten very recently but I guess there is no harm in stashing more prey for later,  she decided against it and I enjoyed watching the delicate feeding habits of the Rock pipit for a while,

Kate settled for a bit of a wash and brush-up until a couple of low flying local Buzzard circled effortlessly around the cove several times with Kate watching their every move,

One moved on along the coast but the other decided to go around one more circuit which was obviously one to many for Kate and up she went to harass it out of her patch,  The buzzard had seen it all before but grudgingly decided to move on with its mate.

I have been getting a bit frustrated at missing possible images of the interactions of our two kestrels at times of prey handover and mating,  Even yesterday My wife and I witnessed a noisy prey hand over while working on another project in the same area so I checked my records for the last couple of years and it seems to be that around four weeks of waiting to be in the right place at the right time is par for the coarse to capture these somewhat spontaneous activities.  I guess only time will tell !