{"id":1650,"date":"2010-06-06T23:06:05","date_gmt":"2010-06-06T22:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/archives\/1650"},"modified":"2013-11-10T20:46:09","modified_gmt":"2013-11-10T20:46:09","slug":"woods-mill-kestrels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/woods-mill-kestrels\/","title":{"rendered":"Woods Mill Kestrels"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->We headed back to Woods Mill today. It&#39;s about <a href=\"http:\/\/my.opera.com\/Words\/blog\/2010\/05\/22\/woods-mill\" target=\"_blank\">two weeks<\/a> since we were last there and I hoped to see the kestrels, or more specifically their chicks. <\/p>\n<p>It took a while, but the afternoon was pleasant (not too hot) and there are worse things to do than sit quietly in a field waiting for something to happen. After about 40 minutes, the first adult appeared. It was carrying some prey (a rodent), which it dropped into the nest box.<br \/><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/kestrel_0606103630.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/kestrel_0606103632.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/kestrel_0606103642.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/kestrel_0606103648.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p>After the adult had flown, a small head appeared \ud83d\ude00<br \/><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/kestrel_chick_0606103663.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p>Some 20 minutes later, another food drop&#8230; this time the prey seems to be a small bird.<br \/><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/kestrel_0606103690.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/kestrel_0606103695.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/kestrel_0606103706.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p>And then, another head appears&#8230;<br \/><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/kestrel_0606103733.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p>The chicks are clearly very young, not nearly so advanced as during my trip <a href=\"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/fox\/kestrelchick\/album\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>There were other sights, of course. I finally managed a shot of an oranged-tipped butterfly. I&#39;ve not seen as many this year as in previous seasons, but the males are wonderfully distinctive.<br \/><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/orange_tipped_butterfly_0606103610.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p>And over the stream, the beautiful demoiselles were dancing. This was manually focused at around mid-stream, and then a matter of waiting for something to flash across the viewfinder. I wasted a lot of shots, but it was nice to capture them in flight. Nothing can convey the magic of these damselflies when witnessed first hand.<br \/><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/beautiful_demoiselle_0606103760.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/beautiful_demoiselle_0606103759.jpg' \/><\/span> <br \/><span class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/natureblognetwork.com\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/natureblognetwork.com\/button.php?u=Words\" width=\"0\" height=\"0\" alt=\"Nature Blog Network\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/span><br \/><i>Camera note: all shots taken with the Canon 40D and EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L USM IS 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":[990,309],"tags":[1144,1177,631,1152],"class_list":["post-1650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-of-prey","category-damselfly","tag-butterfly","tag-chick","tag-damslelfy","tag-kestrel","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650","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=1650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}