{"id":1243,"date":"2008-11-12T23:11:18","date_gmt":"2008-11-12T23:11:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/archives\/1243"},"modified":"2013-11-19T00:13:19","modified_gmt":"2013-11-19T00:13:19","slug":"finally-some-decent-weather","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/finally-some-decent-weather\/","title":{"rendered":"Finally, some decent weather…"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

It seems an age since I've been able to explore the local fields. Yesterday the weather was good but I was in London<\/a>, so today I grabbed with both hands the opportunity offered by blue skies.<\/p>\n

I stopped off by the fields on my way in to work. The pigeons were flocking as usual, but the more interesting activity was in the trees alongside the fields. A small flock of long-tailed tits were flying about, doing their best to hide among the thinning autumnal leaves. Occasionally one would semi-perch on the more open branches, before flitting out of view again.<\/p>\n

Long-tailed tit<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

At lunchtime I took to the fields, with a short detour to grab my wellington boots. It was muddy out there after all the recent rain. The skies were clear, and the views beautiful. No raptors about today, but I did come across a pair of jays. I managed a long distant shot<\/a>, but it can't compete with the wonderful portraits on The Black Rabbit's<\/a> blog. <\/p>\n

I had more luck with the jackdaws. They were out by the woods in small flocks, filling the air with their distinctive cackle.<\/p>\n

Jackdaw<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

The star turn of the day though was a magpie I came across as I was heading back to work. It was hunting<\/a> for what appears to be bread among the leaves, and flying back and forth between a nearby roof and the tree-lined car park. This kind of persistent and consistent behaviour is perfect for photographing wildlife as it allows you to get the right side of the light, plan the shot (at least to some extent) and get properly organized. <\/p>\n

Magpie in flight<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

That was the day (there are more shots in the November Birds<\/a> album), and having had some reasonable success after the best part of a week of almost nothing I was not entirely surprised this evening to see the nicked-ear vixen out in the garden. She had appeared very fleetingly last night (I saw her for all of about 2 seconds), but tonight she was more relaxed.<\/p>\n

The nicked-ear vixen<\/span><\/a>
\"Nature<\/a><\/span>
Camera note: the birds were all taken with the EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens. The vixen was photographed with the EF70-300mm f\/4.5-5.6 DO IS USM at full extension.<\/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":[980,4],"tags":[33,1128],"class_list":["post-1243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds-2","category-foxes","tag-birds","tag-fox","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243","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=1243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}