Bird of the day!

[Beryl]

Yes Chris
And there are lots of peeps here who will hepl you if need be.

Beryl.

[Chris Hammond]

Originally Posted by vinnychameleon

Hi chris. Great photos to. Nice shot of the hen harrier by the way .

Thanks Vinny,

I was actually waiting for a Kingfisher to turn up on a little pit in the Cambs fens quite close to the Wicken Fen nature reserve when the Hen Harrier appeared in the sky. I'd actually been watching a couple of Marsh Harriers and was initially a bit thrown by it. We get lots of Marsh Harriers around these parts, but the HH is normally a winter only visitor. A friend of mine says that it looks like a juvenile (The specks of brown plumage on his chest.) which may explain why he is still hanging around these parts, as he is probably too young to breed. I also saw a pair of Buzzards later in the same day, but unfortunately I was driving at the time.

I'm off to work shortly but may try and squeeze a few minutes in on the way and see if I can photograph a Little Owl that frequents a particular tree on my route.

Regards Chris

[Chris Hammond]

Originally Posted by Ollie

Nothing wrong with those photos Chris they are fine. Welcome to WAB
Roger

Thanks Roger, hopefully I will get better with practise.

I have a number of goals in my mind at the moment, one of which is a Tit that visits a woodland feeder I have set up. I cant determine whether it is a Marsh Tit or a Willow Tit. I think it's the former, but with a bit of luck I'll eventually get a picture and someone can confirm it for me.

Regards Chris

[Za]

Nice pictures Chris, you are very lucky to have such a good patch for birds near you!
look forward to the Little Owl pics, I like watching those funny litttle things bobbing up and down.

[rolf]

Here's my bird of the day, taken at lunchtime, a rather relaxed female Blackbird, enjoying the warmth of the sun.

[Beryl]

Nice Pic Rolf . Really cute.

Here is my bird for the day
A Chiffchaff deciding to change branchses just as I pressed the shutter-release

[Deer Stalker]

My bird of the day was a Kingfisher on the Beaulieu River.

[Gaina]

This little chap was out for a stroll with his brother and Dad this morning. Thanks to the copious amounts of mealworms and beetle-filled fat cakes we've been providing I am sure we have the largest black bird fledgelings in Somerset

[Chris Hammond]

Originally Posted by Za

Nice pictures Chris, you are very lucky to have such a good patch for birds near you!
look forward to the Little Owl pics, I like watching those funny litttle things bobbing up and down.

Thanks Za,

Unfortunately there was a thick fog hanging around this morning. I did stop briefly at the owl tree, but my Sigma APO 50-500mm is too slow for such conditions and there was no sign of the owl this morning anyway. I will try another time.

I had hoped to finish work early enough to spend the last hour of the day at a relatively new RSPB reserve at Lakenheath in suffolk but the job ran on and I didn't get the time in the end. I don't know if any of the forum users are familiar with this area, but it's another little bit of fenland adjacent to the Little Ouse river and last year a friend and I were fortunate enough to spend quite some time watching an Osprey hunting over the river.

We were there to watch the Hobbys that mass there in late summer hunting dragonflies. The afterrnoon will live with me forever as it has to count as the most bizarre sight I've yet to see through my binoculars. You see there was an air display on somewhere nearby and at one time in the sky there was a Wellington Bomber flying across the sky in one direction with it's single Spitfire escort tailing it, and an Osprey flying in the opposite direction with a Hobby close behind it. All four were clearly visible at once in our binoculars. Three or four different people were there to witness it. It was quite uncanny.

THe reason I was hoping to drop by there this evening is because there is a small poplar plantation that has a resident colony of nesting Golden Orioles. I've never seen one, and had no idea that they bred in this country until reading about it on the RSPB website last year. i'm not sure the walkways permit getting close enough to photograph one, but it might be possible if one were to be visible on the edge of the copse. I'd be happy just to watch one through the bins.

So many things to see, and so little time to do so.

[Chris Hammond]

Originally Posted by Beryl

Nice Pic Rolf . Really cute.

Here is my bird for the day
A Chiffchaff deciding to change branchses just as I pressed the shutter-release

I love the drama of that picture Beryl.