Stithians southern cut off today

It was good to be out and about on a lovely sunny but cold day at Stithians southern cut off hide today and I was pleased to record my first female Brambling image of the year posted below thanks to the eagle eye of Hilary Mayes

The feeders were very busy with small birds including several raiding parties of  Long Tailed Tits and Goldfinches and I was treated to a nice take-off sequence to merge by the resident female Great Spotted Woodpecker

 All to soon it was time to head off home to do battle with a new desktop computer and lots of new software so this blog might be a little late on posting tonight !!

Marazion Marsh

I called in at Marazion Marsh on a bright but cold and windy afternoon yesterday to find some of the resident birds showing in the sunshine which has been a bit thin on the ground of late,  A fine Grey Heron was fishing along the reed waterline which always makes a good background,  A family of five Canada geese were feeding on the warren grasses and a few ducks were feeding on the water,

There were a couple of volunteers from the RSPB doing a good job of clearing and burning reeds a little further along the marsh but this tends to be a kiss of death to most wildlife sightings during the time that the work party lasts,

The almost tame Rabbits on the warren took little notice and carried on doing what Rabbits do best !!

After a while an immaculate looking Heron Gull flew in to the water line with a very grizzly looking fish head in its mouth that was covered in sand from the adjacent beach,  It dropped the head in the fresh water then skilfully shook the sand off, turned it mouth on and down the hatch it went with the bird looking well pleased with its find which was probably not the first or last time that it will complete this exercise  A quick wash and brush up to remove sand from its plumage and this immaculate bird was on its way back to the beach looking for another one

Grey Heron's skillful decent

While I was watching the Peregrine in the previous blog yesterday, A Grey Heron glided out from above the 50m cliffs that they were perched on and started to make a slow declining circuit down towards the water level below,

Its slow decent suddenly became a tight vertical spiral of just a couple of metres with the Heron dropping like a stone and I was not quick enough to catch the spiral action or pinpoint the Peregrine locations and I wondered if the Heron had just seen them or perhaps experienced attacks from the Peregrine that were intently watching it on previous occasions.

The Heron stalled its fall within a few metres of the shoreline as shown in the montage image above and opted to fly out over the water several metres to a single rock that was projecting above the waterline,   This once again seemed like a repeated defence tactic as Peregrine do not like ending up struggling with their prey in or over the water,

The Heron settled down as did the Peregrine both of which had taken prey in the previous hour anyway,

The images posted below were all used to produce the flight sequence montage posted above,

Peregrine in flight

I left home well before sunrise this morning to capture images of Peregrine leaving their roost for early morning hunting for prey, I was lucky enough to see two birds leaving and one return with prey which it hungrily devoured with plucked feathers going in all directions from its high cliff ledge,

The second bird returned quite a bit later looking well fed and relaxed enough to settle on the cliffs for some serious preening which suggested that it too had been successful and dispatched its prey before returning,

I was pleased with my flight images even though I had been hoping that I might see some aerial courtship or prey hand-over displays but now that both birds were full I was unlikely to see much more action for a while so I decided to leave that for another day while I retreated home to appreciate what I had taken.

War and Peace at Longrock

War and Peace came all on the same morning at Longrock today,   Just a couple of miles south of St Michiel's Mount the new 65,000 tonnes and 280m long HMS Queen Elizebeth capable of 25 knots was conducting sea trials and practicing War Games,   The ship cost an initial £3.1Bn, was commissioned on the 7th December 2017 and expected to have a fifty year working life,

On her decks were a pair of Chinook helicopters that were assisting with the trials and three or maybe four Merlin MK2 helicopters that all took to the air during the hour that I watched the start of todays trials. They were commissioned in 2014 for force protection and anti-submarine warfare and have a lift capacity of 3.8tons,

They also track and transmit target information to the ships in their protection so I was a little concerned when one buzzed me on the shoreline while I hoped that my long lens and tripod didn't look to much like a terrorist rocket launcher !!

The size of the distant Queen Elizabeth is put into some sort of scale by the two man fishing boat that passes far closer to the camera in the image below and perhaps also the bulky Chinook helicopters dwarfed on her high deck

The 'Peace' had come a little earlier as I briefly watched  a pair of Doe Roe Deer foraging the hedgerow browse line in fields behind Longrock Pool,  I guess the War games produced the more dramatic pictures as the deer were gone from the fields before the sun broke through making good exposure a challenge but given a choice the on the right day,  I would have always stayed with the Deer !!

South coast Peregrine

I missed my pair of south coast Peregrine yesterday so with good weather and northerly light winds I returned again today to find not one but two birds looking full and relaxed on the same cliff face,  I believe they had recently fed as a pair of Ravens were busy clearing up prey left overs a little further along the cliffs without getting any hassle from the Peregrine.

I watched the Peregrine relaxing for around a hour before first one and then the other took to the skies to disappear around the headland,  The first provided me with a take-off sequence but the second one was in the air before I had finished with the first one,  I still managed a couple of aerial shots before it followed on after its mate,

              Both birds are looking fit and healthy in advance of this years breeding season !!

Trewavas head today

It was a cold bright day with a stiff offshore wind when I walked to Trewavas Head at lunchtime,  I was there to check up on possible early annual Adder sightings following a cold night but it was not to be,  I walk on to a favoured perch point for a pair of Peregrine but no show from them either.

A pair of noisy Raven landed while I was there and I think they were the same birds that disturbed the Peregrine last year when they  [the Raven] tried and failed to reconstruct an old raven nest on the cliffs here last year,

One of a pair of local Kestrel  [the Male] also arrived on the same cliff ledge briefly and treated me to a predictable take-off on leaving to create the merged image below,

A pair of chough were feeding amid the cliff vegetation below me for around thirty minutes or so and I can confirm from their leg ring formation that they are the same two birds that successfully raised fledglings in this area last year so it was good to see them feeding and looking very healthy,

At their nest site below a pair of Fulmar were still having trouble with another bird trying to muscle in on the action again the same as reported several days ago,  He does not seem to realise that

                                                           Three are a crowd !!