Archived & Upcoming Images of the Day
There are nearly nightly Tawny Owl visits in the last few days.
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The female Kestrel has been hunting intensively over the farm's fields.
Here she turns a hover into a dive to the ground, but presumably her
prey 'did a runner' and the bird pulls out of her dive.
Unfortunately photographer has already 'lost' her against the hedge and carried
on panning downwards to the landing that didn't happen, so losing focus on the bird
as she flies away.
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A Rook makes an elegant landing on the coupling cable of a rather complex 'T-junction' on the 11kV overhead cabling. This bird was soon joined by their 'spouse' on the other side of the top insulator.
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Oh what a gorgeous bird is the Barn Owl!
This species of owl just must not let the delicate feathers get drenched, so hunting
over the past few weeks has been very restricted by the endless rain.
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After new-years midnight this Barn Owl makes a couple of 3 minute visits to the meadow post a bit over an hour apart.
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Its the silly season for plants this year - here is a small carpet of freshly
flowering Groundsel along the crop edge 3 days before the end of the year.
There are also a few Red Campion and Dandelion flowers to be found
in not particularly sheltered spots.
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Flowering Green Alkanet on the first day of the year along our access track.
Crazy - a whole line of fresh growth in winter.
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This Tawny Owl spends 5 minutes on the meadow post, and is last seen there crouching low and facing the Meadow camera site ... at which he promptly makes a flyby catching his image (but apparently NOT any prey) as the bird passes. The right edge of this montage is the edge of what we got.
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A couple of hours after dark this Tawny Owl makes two visits to the post, and a couple of hours later flies by the post without landing.
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This Magpie has picked up something in the tip of the beak, and is using their
tongue to manoeuvre it down the beak.
Bird tongues are generally rather inflexible compared to mammals, but
they do the job.
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This Magpie seems quite happy to just peck off the remaining fragments of Kernel from this cooked corn cob as pieces 'in-situ' ...
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... while this Grey Squirrel has decided to carry off the whole half-corn cob to finish the bits the humans teeth can't reach, without risk of interruption.
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Sometimes when we arrive just north of the farm entrance a Buzzard appears from a perch we have not yet identified and flies 100 metres along the line of the brook to perch in this tree.
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This pair of Rooks reminded us of a wedding photo. Perhaps not, but they are together by choice.
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A detail from the above. We think Rooks have 'lovely' interesting faces.
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A Rook landing on the grass at the meadow site. The woodland behind is now mostly leafless and allows in quite a lot of sunlight, so it doesn't look 'black' as it does in summer.
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A Tawny Owl catching what we think was a small bird (see below) at the end of the orchard after dark when small birds are roosting. The frame on the right is the same area perhaps 2 seconds later so you can differentiate bird and prey from ground detail.
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Next night the Tawny owl turns up again at the end of the orchard.
This time there is no prey obviously showing.
These pics over 'a few seconds', arrival at the left.
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4 days later this Tawny Owl is really active, landing on the Meadow post at the left in the usual 'rising up' flight pattern.
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Following several visual fleeting sightings, the female Sparrowhawk landed on the 'bird table' part of the kitchen perch for this lovely portrait. The legs and claws look incredibly 'lightweight' for the killing they have to do. The claws look almost needle-like stilettos.
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The local Tawny Owl lands on the kitchen perch. This bird also visited the Meadow Post but this is the best pic on this day.
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Next day this Tawny Owl visits the meadow post for just 3 minutes. Here is the talons-forward landing, rising up from just below the level of the top of the post for a perfect landing.
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An early morning visit by the local Tawny Owl lasted at least 10 minutes.
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A Rook spends at least 10 minutes on the meadow post.
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Half an hour later a Jackdaw makes a similar stop-over.
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As this Blue Tit appeared on our PC screen it looked almost luminous. We haven't 'wound up' the colour of this lovely little creature.
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At the other end of the size scale, the now established male Pheasant on our patch quietly steps across the site.
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This female Kestrel spent a few minutes on the Meadow post, with a fortunately timed second frame catching the bird departing exactly a minute later.
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Next day we watched her hunting over the farm crop. She took up a series of hover positions, as always facing into the wind, but the wind was so strong that she hardly ever flapped her wings, keeping station by endless adjustments of the wing angles, tail position and the Alulae (the wing's 'thumbs'). Wonderful to watch such accomplished flight.
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A drenched female Blackbird has to come out to feed regardless of the rain. Small birds don't have great reserved to sit out bad weather.
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Did we mention it's been raining?
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The female Kestrel stops on the Meadow post for a few minutes.
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A Barn Owl with no leg ring makes several visits to the meadow post over one night. The feathers look very scruffy, most likely from one of many gusty winds overnight this week.
 6 mins @ meadow post blustery wind 1+2+5 of 6 (r-l montage)(r+mb id@1024).jpg)
The landing bird (left) is aiming at the post in the same position as the perched bird at the centre. The second landing (right) occurs 2 hours later.
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A strange lighting effect from the sun hidden by the clouds. A vertical shaft of light rises from behind the cloud and seems to illuminate the clouds above.
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One of those serendipitous moments - a Magpie triggers the camera as a female
Reeve's Muntjac Deer quietly browses on the path behind.
This bit of hedge used to have several woody stems obscuring the path behind,
but intense animal activity has damaged and killed them all.
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On the CCTV we saw a Sparrowhawk grabbing a bird from inside the
kitchen window Peanut feeder and flying off with it.
Later the same day this bird was perched on the grass outside the kitchen with what
we think is a Great Tit clasped firmly in the talons.
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This is a different pass by the female Sparrowhawk on the same day as the kill. Most of the bird is movement blurred even in a camera flash, but you can see those impressive claws catching the light from the flash.
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We only occasionally see a male Sparrowhawk here, but over 2 days the camera catches these two images around the kitchen feeder/perch, both triggering the camera shutter a good deal further away than the woodwork so smaller and not well focussed. But the male Sparrowhawk is in any case about 80% of the size of the female.
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A Barn Owl with a leg ring makes another appearance on the meadow Pole, this time for a couple of really active stays on the post.
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A Barn Owl with a leg ring makes another appearance on the meadow Pole, this time for a couple of really active stays on the post.
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Two Barn Owl landings a couple of hours apart. This is the Owl with no leg ring.
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A Green Woodpecker stops briefly on the meadow post.
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A female Great Spotted Woodpecker flies from the kitchen feeder/perch.
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This mat of fallen leaves to the rear of 'Round Mound' was where we first
spotted this scatter of wood particles, and looked around to find the source -
a dead Willow branch thoroughly pecked over by woodpecker(s).
Green Woodpecker are mostly ground feeders, so most likely this damage
was caused by Great Spotted Woodpeckers.
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A Tawny Owl flies from the kitchen perch having managed to land on the right hand end without triggering a photo.
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What looks like the 'local' Tawny Owl arrives for a few minutes hunt. This bird always seems to fly 'up' to the perch.
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12 frames of Fieldmice (Wood Mice) frolicking at the meadow site gave us 6 frames from
which we built this fun (but also accurately positioned) montage.
Judging by the almost nightly Tawny and Barn Owl visits,
we guess our 'meadow' is heaving with these little creatures & voles!
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This Redwing was some 20m away across the road in a Hawthorn bush/tree. The 3 images (separated by a re-focus each time so over a few seconds) caught the bird perched by a Haw, pulling the Haw off, and then beak open to swallow it!
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The Green Woodpecker has made a few visits lately.
Here she is wonderfully disguised as some mould-coated wood.
Suddenly the green colour makes sense!
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3 successive frames at 1 minute intervals are lucky to catch the arrival, a short look about, and then departure of this Tawny Owl in natural sequence.
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The male Kestrel disappeared from site and we wandered home, only to find him perched on one of the 11kV cables near our house. We watched each other for a couple of minutes before he took off.
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The male Kestrel flew off North-west so we walked that way and across the main road and there he was hunting from the hedge along the main road, first from a Hawthorn bush/tree, and then moved to the top of the cut hedge only a few metres from the mid-morning traffic. You can see the top of a red car just gone past him - the resting sheep is on the other side of the road. He was hunting in the sprouting crop, and leapt down a couple of times out of sight. We guess he was eating worms or insects.
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This male Kestrel was intensively hunting over the surrounding fields.
Here he was hovering, so we have spread the images downwards in natural order.
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This male Kestrel was intensively hunting over the surrounding fields.
Here he was hovering, so we have spread the images downwards in natural order.
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This montage of the male Kestrel is NOT a static hover, but an accurate montage of just over a second as the male Kestrel makes a controlled drop towards a target hidden from us by the roadside hedge.
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The male pheasant (left) is displaying to the female on the
right.
It's never too soon to butter up the girls!
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Only an hour later as darkness falls, and 70m away at the Round pond, we see what we believe
is the same male trying the uncannily similar move on what looks like the same
female.
She will succumb to his charms when she is good and ready :-)
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Grey squirrels vary widely in their behaviour. Some are content to feed
alongside other harmless creatures, while here this Grey Squirrel at the woodland site chases away a male Pheasant.
You can see that the Pheasant's tail is still curled from the takeoff.
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Usually the Grey Squirrels can simply shoo away male or female Pheasants,
but here the Squirrel is getting faced-off by the male Pheasant who
is standing his ground against the pesky not-so-little rodent.
These are at the same scale but different distances from the camera.
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This female Sparrowhawk arrived in the tree across the pond, spread the wings and tail and spent 11 minutes 'sunbathing'. Air temperature was barely about freezing, so the bird may have been enjoying a warm glow from the sun as well as collecting his dose of UV light to make Vitamin D.
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Tits and other small birds regularly passed quite close to the sunbathing Sparrowhawk who reacted in various ways.
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A Red Fox saunters along the path up the meadow, causing this Fieldmouse (Wood Mouse) to leap to safety & triggering the camera to catch them both in the frame. The Fox was apparently unaware of the mouse, or once it heard it knew the alerted rodent would now be impossible to catch.
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This Barn Owl makes a spectacular landing on the Meadow post an hour and a half
after midnight.
This Barn Owl carries a ring on the right leg, the first time we have spotted a
ringed bird of any sort here for some years.
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This Barn Owl makes a flamboyant landing on the Meadow post.
Note that this bird has no ring on the right leg, so we are seeing at least two
different Barn Owls visiting.
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Several hours later on the same night, a Barn Owl visits again.
Eye plumage detail suggests that this is the same bird as the previous visit.
The ringed Barn Owl appears two days later.
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