{"id":1796,"date":"2010-12-12T23:12:34","date_gmt":"2010-12-12T23:12:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/archives\/1796"},"modified":"2013-11-09T23:23:00","modified_gmt":"2013-11-09T23:23:00","slug":"local-bird-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/local-bird-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Local Bird Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->We had beautiful sunshine for the early part of today, which after all the recent bad weather was a genuine pleasure to see.<\/p>\n<p>Out in the garden the smaller birds were making the most of it, including this great tit.<br \/><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/great_tit_1212103144.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p>There were the usual complement of gulls overhead, and starlings high in the trees. And this little thing, flitting around on our roof. I think this is the first time I&#39;ve seen a pied wagtail in the garden, and typical of its species it was keeping to the hard surfaces.<br \/><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/pwt_1212103052.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/pwt_1212103084.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/pwt_1212103103.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p>The local wildlife network has been busy this weekend. A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sos.org.uk\/recent-sightings\/view-4497.html\" target=\"_blank\">white-tailed sea eagle<\/a> has been spotted in West Sussex. A genuinely rare sighting. I didn&#39;t head out to see it (all the indications were that high resolution spotting scopes were the order of the day), but instead headed down to Rottingdean. It&#39;s been several weeks since I&#39;ve been there and the excellent early light had faded. But the sea was calm, and the light over the sea was startling. The birds in the upper right of this shot are a pair of cormorants.<br \/><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/cormorants_1212103404.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p>Up along the cliff face, the fulmars were in full cry. I love watching these highly social birds in their winter roosts, and as ever took a good number of photos. (A &#39;good number&#39; has 3 digits in this context.) One of the joys of photographing fulmars is that they have a devil of a job landing on the cliffs (their legs are not well designed for walking\/gripping). So generally every landing attempt consists of multiple circuits, a lot of wing flapping as they hover just above the landing point, and then a swoop away as they give up, circle around and try again. They do of course occasionally make it, but even then they are likely to ruffle the feathers of any fulmar that got their first! From the photographer&#39;s point of view this allows plenty of time to line up the shot. You miss it the first time, you just wait half a minute and you get a another chance.<br \/><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/fulmar_1212103300.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/fulmar_1212103351.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/fulmar_1212103266.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/fulmar_1212103352.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":[980],"tags":[449,506,57,120],"class_list":["post-1796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds-2","tag-cormorant","tag-fulmar","tag-great-tit","tag-pied-wagtail","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1796","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=1796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1796\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}