Such clean light.

Lots of atmosphere in this set. I particularly like this one.

I bet it is cold if you fall in the water.

Excellent, the pattern made by railing and boards works here nicely.

This last one is interesting: propelling-repelling. I checked internet for it and learned how these pencils evolved.

This is my favorite, old road is always such good subject, leading eye effortlessly.

Great shot, the water shows well the windy conditions. Only drawback IMO is that the surfboard is hidden by wave, it would have been better if rider was on top of wave.

I loved it, conversion and composition are very satisfying!

They are very elegant.

Thousands of golden daffodils! I will send these photos to my sister-in-law. I hope you don't mind it. She loves them, and she is having hard times at the moment. They will help her mood.

Caution: Birds At Work

I've had something of a bird photography bonanza over the past week, well, on the couple of days when it wasn't raining or blowing a gale at least.

It started when I was scouting out a possible location for aurora photography, a local quarry I'd never visited before. Minutes after stepping into the quarry I recognised the angry chirps of a Kestrel ringing around the cliffs. Sure enough, scanning the quarry, I soon located a male Kestrel chasing off a pair of Crows that had dared to enter his territory. Unfortunately, I hadn't come prepared for bird photography, but I quickly switched to the longest lens I had with me on the day, which was the Nikkor 70-180 f/2.8 and grabbed what shots I could.

Kestrel vs Crow

I managed to catch a couple of shots of the Kestrel fighting the Crows, this is probably the best of the action shots, showing the Kestrel, talons outstretched, on a collision course with one of the crows. They missed in mid air, the Kestrel landed on the cliff behind, quickly turned round and chased the crow out of the quarry.

Kestrel Pair

Shortly after dispatching the Crows, the male Kestrel returned and approached the cliff face, eventually settling on a little bush poking out just above the location shown here. What I completely failed to notice at the time, but only spotted when reviewing the images on my computer, was the female Kestrel sat on a ledge on the cliff face just below him here. I think she's holding an unfortunate field mouse in one of her claws.

Male Kestrel Considers Taking On Photographer

As I didn't have the right lens with me on that day, I decided to return later in the week once the rain had stopped. This time I brought the 100-400 f/4.5-5.6S for some closer and hopefully better shots.

Shortly after arriving at the quarry I spotted the male Kestrel circling in the air. He also spotted me and gave me a few angry looks while on his rounds. In fairness, Kestrels always look a bit angry, so he was probably indifferent to me, but I managed to catch him watching me on numerous occasions.

Given what I saw those claws and beak do later, I'm kind of glad he didn't decide I was a threat and just got on with his hunting tasks. His head looks a bit squashed in on this shot, but I think that's because he was banking into the wind and the air was flattening his plumage on that side.

Female Kestrel in Flight

I also saw the female in the air on a number of occasions.

Male Kestrel in Flight

Probably my favourite shot of either Kestrel in flight from that day.

Female Kestrel with Lunch Guest

It wasn't long before the female returned to the cliff face and sat for a while with something in her talons. Eventually she decided to eat it and over about five minutes dismantled what looked to have been a poor mouse, piece by piece in the most gory fashion. I'll spare you the shots I took of that as they're probably a bit too much.

Demure

After the bloody spectacle of lunch she went and sat in a nearby tree looking like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, well, beak. I climbed up to the top of the cliff face (via a path around the side, I didn't scale the sheer walls of the quarry or anything like that) and managed to position myself above the tree, but closer than I had been earlier for this shot.

Take Flight

After a while, she decided to head off and I managed to catch her just as she took to the air.

All in all, probably the best Kestrel pictures I've managed to take so far. I wish I'd had the 100-400 on the first day and should have been using a fast frame rate when taking the shots of the Kestrel fighting the Crows, this might have got me a shot of the two birds much closer than manually firing the shutter like I tend to do. It would probably have also got me hundreds of extra shots to store somewhere too, so perhaps not such a great idea after all. I will be returning at some point to see how they're getting on.

Heron On A Mission

This was a completely unexpected encounter. I'd gone out for a walk around the block. The "block" in this case is a four mile loop from my house, up a hill overlooking the canal and then back along the same section of the canal where I often see the Buzzards (with a 1 mile bit of busy road to get me from where I live to the canal, but we'll ignore that). I wasn't expecting to see much of interest, I wasn't really even in the mood for a walk, but I needed to clear my head and went out anyway, taking the OM1 + 100-400 along on the off chance that I spotted anything.

As I stepped onto the canal, I spotted a large bird further down the tow path, this turned out to be a Heron, something I've never seen on this stretch of the canal before. As I got closer, it flew over to the far side of the canal, but that meant I could still get about 30 feet away from it once I'd reached the point where it had been stood, but as I made my way down the tow path, it was suddenly attacked by one of the Buzzards that I think are nesting nearby. It let out an awful cry as the Buzzard, er buzzed it and then backed off. Of course, I was completely unprepared for this and didn't get a single shot of this confrontation.

As I arrived at the opposite side of the bank, the Heron was watching something in the water. I should have paid more attention to this, but instead, decided to look up to see if the Buzzard was still around, at which point I heard a splash...

Gone Fishing

The Heron had jumped into the canal and managed to grab a large fish (I've no idea what kind of fish it was, probably a question for Wormsmeat), I'd missed the initial jump, but managed to catch it breaking the water with the fish in its beak. I don't think the camera has quite got focus here, but it's near enough to see what's going on.

Down In One! Down In One!

The Heron returned to the bank and dropped the fish in the long grass, studying it, before quickly and viciously spearing it with its beak several times. As I've never seen a Heron catch prey before, I wasn't prepared for what happened next as it grabbed the fish in its beak and proceeded to slowly swallow it, whole! In this first shot you can see the eye of the fish just as it's about to disappear into the dark gaping maw of the bird. Poor fish.

Urp!

The Heron looking kind of smug after finishing its meal.

Watching For Its Next Victim

I wasn't sure what the Heron would do next, not a lot I imagine having just consumed an entire fish in one go, but it kept staring at me and having seen what it had done to the fish, I didn't fancy getting pecked at with that beak, so I decided to head off home, contemplating the spectacular, but somewhat disturbing sight I had just witnessed.

Great moody scenes, no surprise you were not alone !

He is really brave!

I’m freezing just looking at it on my screen.

This is my pick, great series! Wild life is full of violence, blood and struggle.

Bird photography !