{"id":1167,"date":"2008-07-04T00:07:20","date_gmt":"2008-07-03T23:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/archives\/1167"},"modified":"2013-11-20T19:22:35","modified_gmt":"2013-11-20T19:22:35","slug":"never-say-its-just-a-hobby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/never-say-its-just-a-hobby\/","title":{"rendered":"Never say it’s just a hobby"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

I'll come to the title of the post later, but I thought I should provide an update about the gull chicks. Well, they've flown the nest. They were gone on Wednesday morning when I went to look \ud83d\ude41 So here's the final shot, taken on Tuesday.
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It seems early for them to have flown, but they may well have ended up on a neighbouring roof where there seems to be an increased presence of chicks. My access isn't nearly so good though, so I won't be able to monitor them as easily. Here's a number of numbered chicks (they're ringed) on one of the other buildings, taken on Wednesday through a thick glass window.
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Meanwhile, after last night's fox excitement the third of the troupe showed up tonight. The 'nicked-ear' vixen is much the less sociable of the foxes, but she makes up for it by being the most persistent hunter. She was probably after insects in this sequence. I've added several more from tonight to the July Fox Gallery<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Which brings me to the point of this post. I'd had a very quiet day with the camera as I had lunchtime meeting and only managed to grab a couple of poor shots of a rook during the day. The garden seemed quiet as well when I got home. Apart from some gulls and the occasional pigeon, not much was happening. Until, that is, I saw a small dark shape fly high over the garden. I grabbed about three or four frames before it disappeared, and wasn't at all sure what I'd seen until I uploaded the photos to the computer.
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The bird in question is a Hobby. It's very similar to the peregrine falcon, but has a slightly brighter face, and vertical striping on the body which you can just about discern in the second of these shots. One of the more unusual sightings, the hobby is a non-native summer visitor from Africa.<\/p>\n

Camera note: the birds were all taken with the EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens. For the vixen I used the EF70-300mm 4.5-5.6 DO 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":[990,980,4,989],"tags":[424,1128,68,434],"class_list":["post-1167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-of-prey","category-birds-2","category-foxes","category-water-birds-birds-2","tag-chicks","tag-fox","tag-gull","tag-hobby","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