{"id":2170,"date":"2012-01-22T22:01:43","date_gmt":"2012-01-22T22:01:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/archives\/2170"},"modified":"2013-11-06T22:54:18","modified_gmt":"2013-11-06T22:54:18","slug":"perching-birds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/perching-birds\/","title":{"rendered":"Perching Birds"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Birds perch in all sorts of places. That&#39;s one of the benefits of being able to fly. You can get to all sorts of resting points that other creatures can&#39;t reach; and you have a built in safety device should you slip. Of course most birds will settle for a branch in a tree, like this greenfinch in our garden this morning.<br \/><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/greenfinch_2201123116.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p>Another common perch, especially for this next species, are lamp posts. I&#39;m sure it&#39;s the same in other parts of the country, but you can scarcely drive  anywhere in Sussex without seeing a kestrel perched high over the road as it searches for rodent trails. This one was doing just that at one of the highest local points, Telscombe, which is about a mile and half from Rottingdean (up hill most of the way!).<br \/><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/kestrel_2201123269.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/kestrel_2201123292.jpg' \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<p><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/kestrel_2201123306.jpg' \/><\/span> <span class=\"aligncenter\">Kestrel on a lamp post<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The street lamp is nice and stable and affords a good view of the surrounding grass verges. A good spot for a kestrel to pick, and one which preserves energy which would otherwise be expended in hovering. Less understandable was the choice of a starling who pick on a decidedly mobile perch. The winds were gusting at the top of the cliffs and the perch was swinging rapidly from side to side. <br \/><span class='imgcenter'><img alt='' src='https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/starling_weathervane_2201123365.jpg' \/><\/span> <span class=\"aligncenter\">Starling on a weather vane<\/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 \/><a title=\"site stats\" href=\"http:\/\/statcounter.com\/free-web-stats\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/c.statcounter.com\/7187219\/0\/2c644058\/1\/\" alt=\"site stats\" style=\"border:none;\" \/><\/a><br \/><i>Camera note: all shots taken with the Canon 7D and EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L USM 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],"tags":[89,1152,34],"class_list":["post-2170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-of-prey","category-birds-2","tag-greenfinch","tag-kestrel","tag-starling","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2170","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=2170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}