Birds of Prey....Your Pictures Wanted!

Many thanks, Linda. First video uploaded to YouTube, and link added to my original post. Other videos to follow.

Thank you for the link. I had a quick read, but it got far too complicated too quickly. I was rather curious what Bob ended up with. About five times far too expensive for me. I am a very lazy photographer. Default setting is Program mode. If the weather is gloriously sunny, I switch to Tv (Shutter priority - had to look that up). That's it. I just point the lens at the target and push the shutter.

I'll stick with my humble, secondhand Canon 80D.

I did meet a bloke wandering around the nascent Longwater road nature reserve, this morning. He had a Canon R6 and 100-500mm Canon lens. Almost £9000 worth of kit. I paid that much for my car, a secondhand Ford C-max! Plus I'd be terrified to wander around with that amount of expensive stuff hung around my neck.

Three Buzzards were flying over our house. They were not a happy family. It appeared to be a couple fighting off an interloper intruding on their territory. The tussle went on for several minutes, before the interloper was driven off.

Super shots Angus ;-)

Interesting action shots Angus,. W e saw some similar action recently with our local Buzzards but instead of chasing an interloper away the pair were chasing off their youngster from this years nest.

Lovely photos Angus and Alan, thanks for sharing with us.

What a beaut Alan, been ringed too, I wouldn't fancy handling one with that lethal beak.

Buzzard 

Iv been trying to get a photo of a buzzard through my binoculars or telescope for a very very long time more than 2 or 3 years.  birds of prey have a tendency to take off when perched before I  can take a photo so are Easyer when souring but harder with Binoculars and telescopes cause there moveing so can’t see the details you would see on binoculars or a Telescope but now finally I got the opportunity to take a close up.

Saintbridge Balanceing Pond

Shot on a golf course of all things, during our morning walk earlier in spring. Trimmed from a much larger video shot with my Lumix FZ72 bridge camera. Bird was some distance away, requiring a fair bit of zoom, resulting in much shaky filming. This segment had least amount of shaking.

I did creep closer to the bird, filming as I went, which simply added even more shake.  This segment was when I finally stopped and stood still. 20 seconds later, the Sparrowhawk decided it had had enough of me, and flew off

I get the feeling that YouTube compresses images. My original video is far clearer, with much detail. I shall have to investigate YouTube to see if there is a setting to prevent such aggressive compression. Though it does make streaming quicker.