With this awful Covid still rampant , a friend died from it Saturday last, God bless you George, I am involved in the dog world and serve on a single breed dog committee for Golden Retrievers, we are a committee of eleven and two have had the virus, Ingrid bless her has survived. less of this morbid subject and onto the post.
I have lately spent a reasonable amount of time in our garden, firstly looking for the Peregrine Falcons also of an evening in my hide watching and recording the activity of the Barn Owls.
I have a Schedule 1 licence issued by the BTO and have been informed that all ringing of birds has been cancelled but if possible to monitor the nest boxes and report back as previous, with our boxes having CCTV this makes the job considerably easier. I first put the cameras on last Tuesday the 5th May, we have had signs the Owls have been around all Winter but have avoided the cameras till then , upon checking the Male Barn Owl was in the smaller of the two boxes and the female was sitting in the larger box, I have no idea as to how many eggs as she would not get up but I will have the cameras on again soon so as to monitor the progress.
I have again seen the Peregrines, and yes this time they are Peregrines, confirmation by my pal Rhys
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Pigeon on our Roof. Breakfast lunch and tea for the Peregrines, and,y hopefully they will be thinned out as we have so many in our trees and around the area, the Peregrines can only do good. |
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Peregrine Falcon, our garden. Last image taken with my large lens prior to me carrying out the repairs, this bird was about 200 metres away after this I managed to get the lens off the camera which I was told would be a difficult task but turned out to be not that bad, it was slightly jammed in place but once removed I took out the four screws and replaced them with the four miniscule screws sent in the post and after this all is fine { until the next time}. |
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Male Barn Owl, Large box. This is the first image of the season as he was leaving on a hunting trip for the female, after this he took up residence in the smaller box eher I'm sure he will remain until the young have fledged. |
A quick look as to where the noise was coming from, these two images are taken at a high ISO,70,000 plus at F4 as it was almost dark.
The Next four images were taken as I saw him move and kept my finger on the remote button. not good images but shows he does not hang about on leaving.
Male Barn Owl leaving the small box.
He again left very quickly but stopped at the large box and went inside to visit the female, this is what we have monitored over previou years.
Another evening but this time he went away hunting and returned into the large box after a few minutes with a mouse.
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Another evening and even darker, this taken at ISO 8000 + and again opened up to F4.  Buzzard, over the area where the Barn Owl boxes are situated. Image taken over about 100 metres, lens certainly appears sharp enough in focus.  Sand Martin. I'm not sure how I managed to get this image as the bird was as you can see going extremely fast in a dive, put it down as a lucky shot. Thank you for your visit I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I did in the getting of the images and it just shows with a bit of luck the birds you can see in your garden. |
