The Eagle Has Landed

The final images from the ICPB set, of hawks and eagles.

If you'd like to see more, head over to the Birds of Prey Portfolio page.

Vulture Culture

 More images from the ICPB, this time of vultures. The next set really will be the last, honest.

Owl Stretching Time

A few more images from the International Centre for Birds of Prey. These are images of the birds themselves, made during the flying demonstrations. For the purposes of this post, I've brought together those of owls.

Of all the images that I made on the day, these are probably my least favourite - they're basically record shots, in my view. But I made them, and they're probably worth posting, when all's said and done.

Next time, some more record shots, although of hawks and vultures, which will probably be the last from the ICBP set.

I Don't Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

More images from the International Centre for Birds of Prey. Again, birds in their enclosures, this time with the mesh featuring as part of the image.

I've gone with colour images for this set, mainly because of the crazy face on the bird in the first image. The second image is probably my favourite though.

Hedwig has his eye on you...

Scoring a Birdie

Some more images from the International Centre for Birds of Prey (ICBP) in Newent. This set shows birds in their enclosures. I definitely intended to hit a melancholy note, but there's no implied criticism of the organisation. They do important work and the birds wouldn't be free if they weren't at this facility.

The images are slightly soft because I was shooting through a fine mesh which formed the front of each enclosure - the shallow depth of field meant that it became invisible once the focal length went beyond a certain point.

Each enclosure had a skylight made of opaque, corrugated plastic, which is the other factor determining the quality of light in these images.

For The Birds

On Fathers' Day, we paid a visit to the International Centre for Birds of Prey in Newent. These are a couple of the images that I made, there are more to come. 

I've also updated the Birds of Prey portfolio page with images featuring birds and their keepers. Enjoy.

Swanning Around Shapwick II

 

Another image of a swan made at Shapwick NNR. For some reason, I failed to mention how much I like the image in the previous post - in fact, I think that its everything that I've been trying to capture in all the years that I've been making images at Shapwick.

So, here's another from the same set. It took me a number of tries to get it right. I was working at the very far end of the zoom range and trying to get an acceptable depth of field, so this is the only other image that was usable.

Swanning Around Shapwick

 

Yet another image from Shapwick Heath NNR.

Watch The Birdie

Another image from the tendinitis induced hour in the garden.

For The Birds

Recently, I had tendinitis in the right foot. This has been a recurring problem - I would like to think that the cause is over-exercising, but its more likely to be that I've been tying my shoe laces too tight.

Anyway, I had to spend a few days with my foot up, quite literally and this happened to coincide with half term. Anyway, there was at least one day of good weather and I managed to spend an hour sat in the garden, which is when I made this image of a blue tit, which has been frequenting the nest box in our garden.  

Lytes Lunch

Another image from the Lytes Cary outing. This sparrow was sitting on our table during lunch.