We had beautiful sunshine for the early part of today, which after all the recent bad weather was a genuine pleasure to see.
Out in the garden the smaller birds were making the most of it, including this great tit.
There were the usual complement of gulls overhead, and starlings high in the trees. And this little thing, flitting around on our roof. I think this is the first time I've seen a pied wagtail in the garden, and typical of its species it was keeping to the hard surfaces.
The local wildlife network has been busy this weekend. A white-tailed sea eagle has been spotted in West Sussex. A genuinely rare sighting. I didn't head out to see it (all the indications were that high resolution spotting scopes were the order of the day), but instead headed down to Rottingdean. It's been several weeks since I've been there and the excellent early light had faded. But the sea was calm, and the light over the sea was startling. The birds in the upper right of this shot are a pair of cormorants.
Up along the cliff face, the fulmars were in full cry. I love watching these highly social birds in their winter roosts, and as ever took a good number of photos. (A 'good number' has 3 digits in this context.) One of the joys of photographing fulmars is that they have a devil of a job landing on the cliffs (their legs are not well designed for walking/gripping). So generally every landing attempt consists of multiple circuits, a lot of wing flapping as they hover just above the landing point, and then a swoop away as they give up, circle around and try again. They do of course occasionally make it, but even then they are likely to ruffle the feathers of any fulmar that got their first! From the photographer's point of view this allows plenty of time to line up the shot. You miss it the first time, you just wait half a minute and you get a another chance.
Camera note: all shots taken with the Canon 40D and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.
Localart
13 Dec 2010Great cormorant shot.
gdare
13 Dec 2010I didn't even know about fulmars until you've made post about them.
I hope to see some bald eagles in BC, Canada soon 😀
SittingFox
13 Dec 2010A sea eagle?! Wow. Even as a dot, that would have been impressive! 😀
Pied wagtails are so strange. On Saturday, I went to an indoor cafe on the first floor of a very large Tesco store, and found a wagtail walking around between the tables! How it got in there, I've no idea.
Words
13 Dec 2010Adele, yes the eagle had the local (and I guess, not so local) twitchers in a real twitch this weekend!
Wagtails are great little birds. I've seen them in some odd places, but never shopping in Tescos! You should have got a photo 😉
Words
13 Dec 2010Erwin, thanks!
Words
13 Dec 2010Jack, thanks. I did get some closer shots of the cormorants, but I liked that one. It's sometimes better to show 'where' rather than 'what', if you know what I mean.
Words
13 Dec 2010Adele, well I guess the Tamron 500mm lens would be a little strange in that environment. You could always claim that you needed it to read the small print.
SittingFox
13 Dec 2010Funnily enough, it hadn't occurred to me to bring my wildlife lens (or any lens!) with me on a visit to a Tesco superstore! Very remiss, I know :whistle:
Words
13 Dec 2010Darko, when I first saw the fulmars here I had to look them up in a book. We are really lucky to have such a strong colony of them nearby. Good luck with your eagle spotting :up:
SittingFox
14 Dec 2010😆
Ukwildlife
12 Jan 2011Great images – pied wagtails and fulmars, always going to go down well with me!
Words
12 Jan 2011Neil, one day I'll see if I can get both species in the same shot. The wagtails are also down by the cliffs, so it's not an impossible goal.
Wulpen
19 Oct 2012Lovely pict