This is what it really looked like today.
At ground level things were a shade better, mainly due to the crawling shutter.
Things will brighten up, but until they do here’s some more colour… Pretty, the young fox, in the garden. The clips are from the past couple of days. The time-stamp on the first part is wrong!
Camera note: all photos taken with the Canon 7D and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.
It’s ok for this fellow to stand smiling in the rain, but not quite so much fun for the rest of us.
The forecast for tomorrow is mixed, but then we should be getting a dry spell; cold, but dry (which is fine by me)
Camera note: all photos taken with the Canon 7D and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.
It’s been a good while since I’ve posted a kestrel sequence. These shots were taken early this morning at Sheepcote Valley, just outside Brighton. It’s a great location for kestrel spotting as they hunt for small rodents in the grassy downland.
Getting ready to swoop…
The dive…
And away with a vole tightly grasped.
If you think that the rodent in that last shot doesn’t really warrant a mention in the blog title, you’re right. It’s an altogether larger (and by now very familiar) species – the rat – that I was thinking about.
I took these shots at lunchtime while discussing with a local University ecologist recent media stories of ‘mutant’ rats in Sussex. He was concerned about suggestions that even stronger wide-spectrum poisons are needed to control the rat population, and about the associated ecological consequences. Poisons aren’t selective and would impact significantly on other species, including the water vole which has only recently been re-introduced locally. There are also risks to predator species. Meanwhile, the local rats do seem to be thriving this year.
Camera note: all shots taken with the Canon 7D and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.
