After yet another successful year on the Odds & Sods thread, initially started I think by Hazy, it might be wise to kickstart the 2023 thread off.
Thank you to those who have contributed to last years thread, and there has been very interesting odds and sods in "Odds & Sods 2022" that aren't enough to place into a dedicated thread, which you can look back on the following link:
https://community.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/f/all-creatures/278729/odds-sods-2022/1417300?pifragment-4285=76#pifragment-4285=1
What better for me, and as yet, I've not ventured far, ewe know what I mean, with this lassie on Baddesley Clinton estate yesterday....
Mike
Flickr: Peak Rambler
I looked again through the series of photo's that I took. This was a smaller darker image but when I lighten it, I think it shows it to be a rodent:
(Pardon the Scottish Accent)
Much clearer SM, it was the open mouth front on that made it look so strange
Kestrels do catch birds in times of lean numbers of voles & other rodents, my resident one swooped on my Pyracantha bush which housed many house sparrows & starlings a couple of times a year ... he always caught one, usually a starling, which shrieked horribly! So pleased I don't have Sparrowhawks here!!
2013 photos & vids here
eff37 on Flickr
Birds stocking up before the storm. Hadn't seen Tree Sparrows for a while.
Morning all. I've been a little preoccupied of late with decorating (stripping/painting staircase), fixing toilet cistern and making good ceiling after minor flood caused by said cistern.
Anyway enough of my decorating woes... Tuesday morning was bright if a little cloudy. What started as a disappointing visit to Moor Green Lakes and nascent Longwater road nature reserves were buoyed with not one but three Kestrels in hunt mode.
I managed to almost get an entire sequence of a Kestrel stooping and catching a creature. All photos heavily cropped. Here's the Kestrel hovering about 130m from me.
Then it stooped. The bird is right at the bottom of the photograph I took, so I feel I was dead lucky to get this.
It then pulled up and hovered briefly. I think animal/eye tracking on my R7 is the only reason the kestrel is in focus. I doubt my old 80D would have picked this kestrel out from the background clutter.
The bird stooped again (too quick for me to track let alone photograph) before hovering very briefly. Again, hats off to animal/eye tracking for picking this kestrel out from all the foreground and background clutter.
Next thing I knew, the bird popped up and flew across my vision, but now about 40m from me. This image is uncropped. The kestrel is clearly carrying something in its beak. But what?
It flew along a bit of banking built this year to separate a reed bed from a lake.
It flew closer to the banking.
Then started to disappear behind it. My old 80D would have focused on the banking. The R7's animal/eye tracking is, I reckon, the only way I managed this shot.
The bird then popped up and landed on the banking.
What had the kestrel caught? Here is the bird cropped out. I think it is a spider.
90% luck, 5% field craft, 5% camera skills.
Very impressed Angus. Particularly the one with the spider. What lens did you have on to catch that? I am finding that when I get it right the R7 takes some cracking shots. I think that the focusing is so precise, it is easy to slightly miss what you are focusing on, reulting in out of focus issues. I also find that good light helps too (obviously). Low light contrast can be an issue focusing in shaded areas - under trees etc, but in good light no problem. As you say, the eye tracking is also a great feature ...