Saturday 26 May 2012

Foxes

I've spent many hours watching foxes and areas where foxes should be..... this spring, with minimal success.

These photos are the best I've managed so far and my thanks go to Ed Treverton for finding these and those at a second earth that we watched last evening.

Vixen

Fox cub

Fox cub

Sunday 20 May 2012

Adder

A couple shots of a female Adder taken on the North Cornish coast yesterday morning.

Female Adder

Female Adder

Tuesday 15 May 2012

Dipper

I managed to grab a few shots of a dipper on the River Fowey at Respryn this afternoon.

They were busy feeding young in the nest but were using regular perches to and from the nest so were fairly easy to locate.

Dipper

Dipper

Dipper

Friday 11 May 2012

Song thrushes

It's very unusual to find a songthrush nest that is easily photographable without causing disturbance so I was delighted to find such a nest a week ago when I saw the adult bird sat on the nest about 6 feet up the side of the trunk of an oak tree.

The bird sat tight when people walked along the footpath which was just a few feet away and I thought that it was incubating it's eggs. The next time I looked the bird was noticeably higher in the nest with it's feathers fluffed out around the side.
When I looked again a few days later I saw 4 large chicks that looked just about ready to fledge.

I took some shots yesterday using a remote control where I left the camera on a tripod on the footpath with the 500mm lens giving a safe distance and I retired some 25 metres away and watched the adult birds returning with food through my binoculars whilst triggering the camera remotely.

Here are some of the images......


Songthrush nest

Songthrush nest






Songthrush nest

Sunday 6 May 2012

Birds on the Cornish cliffs

I spent the morning on the cliffs near Padstow today and it was glorious.

It's only 15 minutes from home but I know I don't go there often enough.

The flowers were great and the birds all looked fantastic in their best breeding plumages.

The skylark was feeding on the ground near the coast path and was unbothered by my attention whilst the meadow pipit was nesting in the bottom of a gorse bush and was a little more wary.

The stonechat was flipping around all over the place with it's mate in tow and was likely to have been nesting somewhere in the vicinity.

The guillemots were sharing a ledge with 6 razorbills and I did count 35 guillies but there were several more under the cliff area I was stood on but an accurate count can only be done by boat.

A peregrine was in distant attendance and a female kestrel was hunting from a fence post and allowed me to get quite close.

Skylark

Meadow Pipit

Female Stonechat


Guillemots

Guillemots


Peregrine Falcon

Female Kestrel


Friday 4 May 2012

Wheatears abound

Went up to Davidstow moor on Wednesday and was delighted to find the place alive with Wheatears, they were mostly males and there must have been well over 150 of them scattered across the disused airfield.

One downside was that after spending a couple of hours scanning the ground I arrived home to find that Les & Dot had been watching a male Golden Oriole in a tree in the same area of Davidstow... hey-ho!

Wheatear

Wheatear

Wheatear