Hi Ianrose, welcome to the forums! Thanks for sharing your photo.

That's a brilliant picture and a wonderful bird of the day, your very lucky to be able to see it regularly!

Thanks for the welcome.
Luckily, the Kestrel is used to people being around and, although you can't get too close, she is very tolerant. Here's another pic -
   

Hello Ianrose82, you are most fortunate in having such a great view of the sparrowhawk.

What do you do, that you have a resident sparrowhawk?

Welcome to Wildlife UK, too!

Kingfisher

Hi Kingfisher
It's a Kestrel, not a Sparrowhawk :-).
I work for a company that has a 43 acre site with a lrge green area with trees and a pond. We get quite a variety of birds....the Kestrels breed each year!

In 1985, we had a two week holiday staying in a cottage on the Isle of Lewis. One of the birds we wanted to see was the corncrake. As we got out of the car at the cottage, a corncrake was crex crexing in the meadow right next to us, so we stood quietly and waited. Our patience was rewarded when the bird walked out of the vegetation and across the tarmac in front of us. We grabbed cameras and managed to get a few shots of it calling again in the meadow. Not very good pics, I didn't have the equipment then that I do now.



Throughout the whole two weeks, the corncrake never stopped crexing, from dawn til dusk. As our bedroom was on the ground floor, with the window looking out over the meadow, we got the full blast. After a couple of days, I could have cheerfully strangled the thing!

Very nice pics, Ian & welcome from tibbar & skippy
Wild canon well done you did better than Simon King!!!

This post was last modified: 20-09-2007 07:27 AM by tibbar.

I posted recently that I'd had a chiffchaff in my garden. What surprised me was how small it was. Normally, I only see them through my binoculars at 8x magnification, so to see one close to with the naked eye was great.

Anyway, I have found in my photo library a pic I took on the Llangollen Canal earlier this year.

Came home from doing a bit of shopping yesterday to find this blackbird tucking in to the berries on the plant growing on the wall in our front garden. It didn't seem inclined the leave even while I was letting the dog out of the car, so nipped indoors and grabbed the camera. Just stood against the car and fired away while it "hoovered" up the berries.





(just seen all the speeling mistooks and have korekted themn)

This post was last modified: 26-09-2007 09:32 PM by wild canon.

Oh, sorry! That's the American in me talking there! When I was young, my father referred to the local version as 'sparrowhawks'--they are in fact, American Kestrels. But we didn't know that back then .

Kingfisher

Hi Ianrose82 - great kestrel pics - great to be able to observe such a fantastic bird from your own workplace.

wild canon - you're so lucky to have seen the Corncrake - it's one of the birds I'd most like to see, here in Britain. Have to say that the morning til night crexing would be annoying. I guess if I went up to Lewis, I should bring some earplugs, just in case.

I love the blackbird as his head hasn't caught up with the rest of his body!

Great blackbird pictures, his head does look very small doesn't it!

It's been a bit cold to sit outside in the garden with a camera - so can I have a bird of July please? We've always had Nuthatches in the garden, but one has never posed quite like this before! They usually grab a nut from the cage & they're off again!

I love nuthatches, so colourful and such a repertoire of calls. They seem to be the most common bird in my local patch of woodland, but to get near enough to get a photo is not easy. Well done.

Beautiful photos skylark!