Thursday 18 September 2014

Hobby Hawks ........ fantastic !

Having discovered the extent of the territory of the Titchmarsh Hobby's I plan to make the most of their presence before they Migrate.

Their nest site is some one hundred metres from the reserve, watching them today they were very showy along the River Nene and around the Electricity Pylon that seems to be their resting perch when not feeding.

Photography wise they are super fast and hug  the ground tightly when hunting their prey, dragonflies. I wonder if the RAF developed their low level tactics based on this bird of prey. 

On one occasion one of the juveniles caught a dragonfly about thirty feet away from me and I actually heard its talons hitting its prey !

Their camouflage is amazing and they just suddenly appear giving little time to get onto them, occasionally they will soar a bit on fixed wings,but not very often, they are hyper.

On many occasions they were being mobbed by Crows, but I think the Hobby's were just tolerating the imposition on their aerial superiority !


This is the best I achieved, I shoot in JPEG rather then RAW ( I spend too much time on computers as it is ) and restrict processing to a bit of sharpening and cropping.



Canada Geese are a bird that you can not get away from around any gravel pit in the UK nowadays. Love them or hate them they are here to stay.

Are they photogenic ? ........ today I got an image of something that happens before any chat show -  The Green Room - I just like the colour balance in this image - enjoy.






4 comments:

  1. Great effort on the Hobby they are rapid. Do you use single point auto focus or multiple, I get better results from single point over multiple.
    I like our Canada geese on Eastfield Park, especially as they honk their arrival in the evening.

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  2. Hi Douglas, on my D300s for aerial shots I use centre weighted with 21 point auto-focus area,

    But I am always willing to learn if this set up can be improved !

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    1. If I go for Hobby along the ground I find enabling just the centre auto focus spot makes the auto focus more accurate and quicker to respond

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  3. Many thanks for the input Douglas, interesting .... I'll give it a try, John

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