![](\"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/south_downs_2206085005.jpg\")
South Downs<\/span><\/a><\/p>\nThere are several species of birds which are common sightings over farmland, and today the house martins<\/a> and swallows were out in numbers. Both species are hellishly awkward to photograph. They swoop, skim the ground and generally change direction at high speed without stopping for breath. I waste a heck of a lot of frames on them, but occasionally it works.<\/p>\n In between taking shots of the swallows and martins I kept my eye open for what else might be about. And I hadn't been there long when I got my first 'big' sighting. A heron circled the field, coming somewhat closer than earlier in the week. <\/p>\n Next on the list of the more unusual sightings was a seagull. Yes, you read that right! A seagull. Most of the gulls we we see round here are the ubiquitous herring gulls, and at certain times of the year there are large flocks of black-headed gulls. This one was neither. It was a Great Black-Backed gull, the largest and most dominant of the gulls, but not nearly so common as the other species. <\/p>\n But I'd gone out to see buzzards, and after an hour or so there still hadn't been any sign of them. Until I was about to leave…<\/p>\n It was keeping low over the fields, which proved something of a struggle for focusing. Lots of wasted shots (as ever). Buzzards are big, almost twice the size of a kestrel or sparrowhawk, but size is no deterrent to crows when they decide that someone is on their territory. Even so, I was still taken by surprise when a crow decided to do some lone 'mobbing'. And yes, it saw the buzzard off! <\/p>\n More shots from today in the June Birds<\/a> and South Downs<\/a> albums. I also saw a kestrel<\/a> \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n Camera note: all the birds were photographed with the EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens. I used the EF 24-105 F4L IS USM for the landscape.<\/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":[990,980,1003,1004,989],"tags":[33,179,68,1179,94,1165],"class_list":["post-1161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-of-prey","category-birds-2","category-landscape-2","category-south-downs-national-park-landscape-2","category-water-birds-birds-2","tag-birds","tag-buzzard","tag-gull","tag-heron","tag-south-downs","tag-swallow","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161","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=1161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Swallow<\/span><\/a><\/p>\nHeron<\/span><\/a><\/p>\nGreat Black Backed Gull<\/span><\/a><\/p>\nBuzzard<\/span><\/a><\/p>\nCrow and Buzzard<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<\/span>Buzzard and Crow<\/span> <\/p>\n