{"id":1096,"date":"2008-03-26T22:03:58","date_gmt":"2008-03-26T22:03:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/archives\/1096"},"modified":"2013-11-22T20:24:44","modified_gmt":"2013-11-22T20:24:44","slug":"sometimes-you-have-to-make-do-with-just-seeing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/sometimes-you-have-to-make-do-with-just-seeing\/","title":{"rendered":"Sometimes you have to make do with just seeing…"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

We're just back from a few days in Weymouth<\/a>, a beautiful and rugged part of the south coast of England and a natural haven for wildlife. But this wasn't a photography trip and I only took the short lens with me so mostly I just have memories rather than photos.<\/p>\n

Given the almost total absence of garden fox sightings recently I made some amends by three sightings of foxes from the train while we travelled down. One meadow fox, one on a railway embankment, and one crossing a garden lawn. As we travelled further west, the landscape becomes less hilly and approaching the Southampton area I had some fleeting views of muntjac deer from the train. There were also birds of prey, including buzzards. I did manage one shot from the train of these.
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Other raptor sightings including a pair of low hovering kestrels, and a swooping sparrow hawk. I think though that the pick of the birds seen while travelling has to have been the sight of a raven on the wing. At least that's my best guess at an identification, which I'm basing on my initial assumption that it was another buzzard until I looked closer. The size is the key (and this bird was huge), and combined with the rugged black plumage suggests 'raven' rather than one of the more common corvids. That's a first for me (apart from endless trips to the Tower of London as a child!).<\/p>\n

The one tiny diversion into my normal mode came when we took a walk along the seafront at night. I'd taken the camera with me to attempt some 'reflection<\/a>' shots of the sea, and in the distance spotted a large bird wading in the surf. It wasn't a gull, that was clear. And as I looked closer through the dark I realized it was a grey heron grazing the shallows. With just a short lens getting a good shot was going to be next to impossible but at least I had taken the flash unit out with me so there was a chance of something.
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Camera note: all shots taken with the EF 24-105 F4L IS USM lens.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[980],"tags":[33,407],"class_list":["post-1096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds-2","tag-birds","tag-weymouth","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t