{"id":1550,"date":"2010-01-05T00:01:21","date_gmt":"2010-01-05T00:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/archives\/1550"},"modified":"2013-11-12T00:34:53","modified_gmt":"2013-11-12T00:34:53","slug":"sheep-at-sheepcote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/sheep-at-sheepcote\/","title":{"rendered":"Sheep at Sheepcote"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

Having taken a slightly extended Christmas break, I headed over to Sheepcote Valley today (my usual kestrel haunt), and for the first time actually saw some sheep there. Apparently they are using them to graze various parts of the valley over the next few weeks. Temporary fencing has been erected to stop them wandering too far. The local bird life was enjoying the unexpected guests. Magpies were darting in and out among the sheep, but the starlings have taken familiarity altogether further.
<\/span> Starling on a sheep<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span> Two starlings hitch a ride<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span> No starlings for this one, though<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, I saw my first woodpecker at this location. It was the merest flash of colour, but enough to fire off the camera. It was only when I got home that I worked out what I'd seen. Given the lack of heavily wooded areas in the valley this really was quite an unusual sighting. I've not heard them there before either.
<\/span> Green woodpecker, somewhere in the middle of the shot<\/span><\/p>\n

Naturally I photographed the kestrels, but I'll limit myself to a single photo for now. I feel an album is due soon, when I have a little more time.
<\/span> Kestrel<\/span><\/p>\n

Unusually, I also photographed a dog which wandered up to say hello. Posted here for utter cuteness value!
<\/span> <\/p>\n

I missed the foxes on Sunday night, but could hear distinctive and very loud calling from neighbouring gardens and caught the briefest glimpse of a fox rushing through the garden and out over a fence. Tonight was calmer, and the bold vixen was back enjoying the clear, cool night.
<\/span> The bold vixen<\/span>
\"Nature<\/a><\/span>
Camera note: all the daytime shots were taken with the Canon 40D and EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens. Once again the photo of the vixen was taken with the EF 24-105 F4L IS USM lens.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[980,4,1041],"tags":[1128,1152,135,168,115],"class_list":["post-1550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds-2","category-foxes","category-sheep-wildlife","tag-fox","tag-kestrel","tag-sheep","tag-starlings","tag-woodpecker","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}