Category Archives: Behaviour

Heron Makes a Splash and a Rat Confronts a Crow

May 13, 2014 by Words | 3 Comments

The weather was odd today. I got caught in a torrential downpour at lunchtime, but we also had some beautiful early and late sunshine. I also managed to get some of my usual photographic subjects in unusual situations. So despite the rain, a good day.

I’ll start with a short sequence of a grey heron taken this morning. I’d spotted it on one of the No Fishing signs, but after a few minutes it flew to the edge of the pond and paused (posed?) on some rocks.

grey heron

The next couple of photos show the heron taking to the wing. The spray was caused by either a duck or a gull (they were just out of shot).

heron in spray

heron in spray

The white goose was playing guard duty with the eight greylag goslings.

White goose with three greylag goslings

Greylag and white goose escorting greylag goslings

The young moorhens are growing up fast. here’s one of them preening itself, with an adult in close attendance.

moorhen juvenile preening

The penultimate sequence is one of the more unusual encounters, I’ve seen at the pond. The photos aren’t great. My vantage point wasn’t good (a park bench was between me and a lot of the action), and they were moving fast. A small group of crows was picking through the grass for breadcrumbs and other tidbits, but were being confronted by a hungry rat. The rat was consistently the aggressor, rushing forward and leaping at the crows. As I said, the photos aren’t perfect, but they give something of an idea of what I was watching.

rat and crow confrontation

rat and crow confrontation

rat and crow confrontation

rat and crow confrontation

I’ll close with a photo taken early evening in the garden. We’d just had another downpour which triggered the appearance of a near-perfect double rainbow.

Double rainbow

Camera note: all wildlife photos taken with the Canon 7D and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens. Rainbows taken with the EF17-40mm f/4L USM lens.

Also posted in Birds, rats, water birds, Weather Tagged , , , , , , |

Fox and Badger Video

April 15, 2014 by Words | 4 Comments

This is a bit of a mixed bag. I spent most of my free time looking for small woodland birds. I could hear them, but getting a clear line of sight proved somewhat more difficult. I had better luck with the speckled wood butterflies which were out in number.

Speckled wood butterfly

This is a view of the woodland path I was following. It’s very pretty and runs adjacent to the fields where I was photographing buzzards yesterday.

woodland path

I made a very brief visit to the pond at Falmer Village to check up on the moorhen chicks. They’re doing fine. 😀

Moorhen chick and adult

Back home the garden is lively at night with foxes and badgers. I’ve even managed a couple of direct sightings of the bolder of the still shy pack. This is from last night.

fox

The trail camera is doing rather better than me at the moment and there are some nice behavioural interactions among these clips of foxes and badgers taken over the past two nights.

I’ll close with the moon from this evening. It’s just a few hour past full and was still quite low in the sky when I took this.

moon

Camera note: all photos taken with the Canon 7D and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.

Also posted in Badger, Butterfly, Foxes, Landscape, Moon, South Downs National Park, water birds Tagged , , , , , , , , |

Three Foxes and a Badger (video)

February 22, 2014 by Words | 3 Comments

I’ll come to the video in a moment, but first some photos of one of the three buzzards that flew over the garden this morning. We do see them occasionally up here, but it’s a long time since I’ve seen three together (though only two feature in these photos, and I failed to get a group shot).

This is the first buzzard (which was closely followed by a second one). It flew across the rear of the garden, so I only had a few moments to get a photo.

Common buzzard

The third of the buzzards circled overhead for a while. These are two of the better photos. Both are hefty crops.

Common buzzard

Common buzzard

Now to the video. It’s a series of clips taken over the past two nights via the garden trail camera. The sequences include two clips of a badger, plus the three most regular fox visitors. Pretty you know (she’s by far the smaller of the group). There’s a large healthy male (Nicked Ear) who has been around for some time. The third fox has shown up up several times recently. He appears to have a mangey brush, though the rest of him doesn’t look too bad for now.

Finally, a photo of Pretty taken a couple of hours ago.

Fox on garden step

Camera note: all buzzard photos taken with the Canon 7D and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens. The fox was photographed with the EF 100mm f/2.8L macro IS USM lens. Video via the Bushnell Trophy HD.

Also posted in Badger, Bird of Prey, Foxes, mange Tagged , , , |