{"id":1113,"date":"2008-04-12T23:04:43","date_gmt":"2008-04-12T22:04:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/archives\/1113"},"modified":"2013-11-22T19:25:36","modified_gmt":"2013-11-22T19:25:36","slug":"time-for-the-birds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/time-for-the-birds\/","title":{"rendered":"Time for the birds"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

The English weather continues to baffle. Bright sunshine and hail was on the menu today, and the temperature was less than ideal. The mix of light also makes selecting camera settings something of a lottery, but despite that it's been a good couple of days for bird watching. <\/p>\n

Yesterday I finally caught up with one of the local green woodpeckers<\/a>. I've had glimpses over the past week or so, and have heard them (they make an unbelievable noise), so finally to be fortunate enough to be in camera range was a treat.<\/p>\n

I had another surprise today. Goldfinches are among the most beautiful of our birds, and I get plenty of opportunity to see them out along the edge of fields<\/a> but have never seen them in the garden. That's changed. This morning I glanced up the garden (into the direct sun) and perched on a shrub – in near silhouette – were a pair. I managed two frames before they were gone. This is the second of them. It was quite a handful to process, but hopefully worth it.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Out in the local fields this afternoon I had a couple more firsts-of-the year. A lone swallow – proving it's not yet summer – swept overhead, and a pair of skylarks were cavorting over the shrub-land.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

But the star was a kestrel.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

It was hunting along the edge of the valley, sweeping along the skyline. And as with the goldfinch it was the wrong side of the sun, meaning I was once again shooting into the light. Most of the shots were taken at a distance…<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

But not all. As I was panning its path it came ever closer. One of those moments when you pray the camera settings are ok because you're not about to look away to check or change. You just fire away in bursts.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

All these and more are in the April Birds<\/a> album. It's turning into a good month!<\/p>\n

Camera note: all shots taken with the EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L USM IS 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":[990,980,1042],"tags":[33,1152],"class_list":["post-1113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-of-prey","category-birds-2","category-weather-2","tag-birds","tag-kestrel","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}