My wildlife photo thread

Those cliffs are really cool!

I'm with everyone else, that moonrise photo (and the sunset one above it) are AMAZING. I would have either one on my wall.

I've really enjoyed your lovely bird photos, back on topic.

I'm really pleased people are enjoying these, it gives me something more to do with the photos I'm so happy to have caught!
Yesterday's winner of the Most Obliging Bird award on my walk was this beautifully calm and patient heron - a species I often see at a distance or in passing, but never had chance to watch and photograph so close up before. They're always a bird I enjoy when I spot one, but so much more stunning when you can really see all the details of feather colour and shape.

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(I don't know why these first two photos have shrunk small, on my laptop they're saved 800px wide exactly the same as the following shots - I think perhaps my photo hosting site is resizing them if it's got a maximum dimension limit and herons are too tall? )

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It seems there is a height limit indeed. It is probably good htat you don't find giraffes during your walks. :afraid:
So beautiful pictures and so nice you can get so close to grey herons.
Oh, the Portuguese name of this animal is much nicer, we call it the royal heron.

I can often see the heron here.

George wrote:

sunny wrote:

what very beautiful photos. Looks like you had a thrilling afternoon! Thanks for sharing again!, I'd never heard of those stripey cliffs ?

Here's the cliffs in all their glory!

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what amazing cliffs! I'm only familiar with the 'white' cliffs

love your excellent photos of the heron George. It definitely shows all the elegance and fine details of this impressive bird! Your camera is very very good!

Those pictures of the heron are not only great, - they are uniqe


I don't think I have ever seen photos of a wild heron where you can see every tiny detail !
Yes, look at the feathers, but also the legs : You can see every tendon and even "scale" in the skin where the legs bend !
And see all the delicate colours in the beak !!!
Fantastic, wonderful, thankyou very much for sharing

Gorgeous heron!

In our previous house we lived on the water and we had a resident great blue heron that we would always see. At night he would stand on our dock and catch fish because my father had a bright light post that would attract fish.

I miss all the wonderful birds that I used to see, I'm glad you got to see such an amazing bird up close!

Earlier today, I was standing at the kitchen window watching the birds - our usual mixture of lots and lots of house sparrows, a robin and a blackbird popping in and out, some blue tits and great tits, and a couple of collared doves in the trees. But we also had one of the slightly less frequent visitors, a great spotted woodpecker, so I picked up my camera and got a few shots through the window

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With some sparrows, the woodpeckers are quite bossy and won't share the same feeder with other birds, but don't mind them being on the other feeders nearby (and there's a second nut one in another bit of the garden, so the smaller birds can just go there if they're particularly after peanuts not the fat balls or seed)

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This was the nicest shot, the only trouble with trying to take pictures while they're eating is how much their heads move and blur the photos, so not many were very sharp all over

Suddenly every single bird in the garden vanished in a flash, hidden deep into the shrubs or the hedge in silence, and I knew what was coming - a few moments later, a sparrowhawk appeared

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She hadn't caught any birds, just landed here in the tree for a few seconds, then left again

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So that was two very handsome birds photographed in my garden in quick succession

You get great birds in your garden, they aren't typical garden birds. Great photos of the woodpecker and sparrowhawk.

Lovely photos! I used to feed the birds in our old house and we mostly had sparrows and mourning doves. Some red-tailed hawks would come by but the sparrows were smart enough to fly into our crab traps and they could be safe from the hawks. It was like a little jungle gym for them haha. Although sometimes we had to rescue the mourning doves because they would squeeze in and then get stuck. Lovely woodpecker shots! I never see any by me.

I've been terrible at getting photos cropped and uploaded for this thread - I had a lovely photoshoot with some very patient fallow deer last month, and I'm sure I can find some birds from through the summer if I go back through my folder another time.
But I went for a really long nature walk today - five hours, no idea how many miles! - and I remembered I'd started this thread and had somewhere to share the nicest photos!

First, a gorgeous little muntjac deer - I spotted him before he saw me and had a few blurry shots through the reeds and thought that was all I'd get, then he crossed a wide open patch and I was able to take some much nicer photographs.

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It's funny, I've been seeing these deer regularly for about two decades, and over the last few years I've got to know a few close-up in my horse field during the winter (they know me too, and carry on nibbling), but never when I've had the camera with me before, this is the first time I've ever got any pictures taken!

The rest of the good wildlife shots for the day are all birds (I also take a lot of plants and scenery, but they don't fit this forum's theme so well)

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Above and below, an oystercatcher, one of my favourite coastal birds with their sleek flashy black'n'white pattern

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A curlew splashing about on the mud flats, with a 7T leg tag

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A nice shot of a red kite - usually the sun's on their backs and I get a shady angle of the underside, but the low afternoon light lit up the bottom of the wings here

It was a bird-of-prey kind of day...

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A buzzard being given a hard time by a kestrel

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And when it tried to get away from one bird mobbing it, a few jackdaws decided to have a go too!

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A very handsome goose!

And finally, I'd like some help with an ID, please?
I think I saw a marsh harrier, but I've only ever seen them on tv before, and wonder if anyone here is more familiar with the species. The colour's not typical, if it is one then it's a dark morph looking nearly black, but I'm thinking it could be what I suspect : it's in an area which is known for them (featured on BBC Springwatch/Autumnwatch for the last few years), and it was behaving differently to the usual raptors I see, soaring low over a reed bed, with the wings in a shallow V angle which is one of the ID pointers in my bird book. Apologies these pictures are terrible, it was a long way away and heading away from me

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Spectacular photos! So many raptors and I love the muntjac. I'd love CollectA to make one like this.
Red kites are sooo beautiful and the pair of raptors is amazing.
I can't help you too much about the last bird but I tend to believe your identification is correct.

Beautiful photos! I always love to see wild life that isn't local to me. Love the bird of prey photos! The light on the red kite is just gorgeous!

Nice pics  I'm very impressed by the Muntjak, I forgotten they are wild now in UK and so I discovered that some are wild in France too... but not in my garden  and I sincerely don't know where they are

How wonderful to be able to discover all this wildlife on a UK walk! It's always a special moment when an animal trusts you enough to get up close!

Roger wrote:

Spectacular photos! So many raptors and I love the muntjac. I'd love CollectA to make one like this.
Red kites are sooo beautiful and the pair of raptors is amazing.
I can't help you too much about the last bird but I tend to believe your identification is correct.

YES! I've been putting a muntjac on the 'CollectA wishes' thread ever since I joined the forum, it really is the deer species I feel most bonded to and familiar with, and I trust CollectA to do a great job with it after all their wonderful antelope and deer in the past - whoever sculpts those has such a feel for them.

Red Kites used to be incredibly rare here, found in just a few places, but they're a conservation success story and they've spread across the country, for a long time I'd only ever see them when on long trips several counties away and it's really only the last two or three years I've seen any in my 'home patch', so it's still a thrill. First one seen from my own garden this summer!

Joliezac wrote:

Beautiful photos! I always love to see wild life that isn't local to me. Love the bird of prey photos! The light on the red kite is just gorgeous!

I think that's what's lovely about the forum, what's normal local wildlife to one person is totally exotic and foreign to another, so even the most everyday sightings are worth sharing. It was a gorgeous bright day - in fact we were due for a whole week of rain and cloud ever since, which is why I chose that day for my walk, the last sunny dry one before the mud begins

Kikimalou wrote:

Nice pics  I'm very impressed by the Muntjak, I forgotten they are wild now in UK and so I discovered that some are wild in France too... but not in my garden  and I sincerely don't know where they are

Thank you! They've gradually got more common here, these days I see them more often than all our native deer added together (we have wild roe deer locally, wild fallow I see on walks a bit further away, and red I only see as managed herds in parkland).

Bonnie wrote:

How wonderful to be able to discover all this wildlife on a UK walk! It's always a special moment when an animal trusts you enough to get up close!

If you watch Autumnwatch on the BBC next week, you'll see the exact same fields, woods, and marsh which I walked through, it's their main filming location again this year. But it's been one of my favourite walks for a long while before they ever came here, I've seen all sorts of fun things there (a bee swarm in a hollow tree, nuthatches and goldcrests, adders in a hay meadow, birds murmurating over the mudflats at sunset, fossils and bones on the beach...great place!)

Here's one more picture I had picked out but forgot to upload last time, goldfinches enjoying the teasel seeds :

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If the deer is a good idea for CollectA, the goldfinch is a good idea for Papo.

George wrote:

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what a wonderful time you have had George!
and to meet such a handsome special chap on your journey too - what a blessing!
You've taken some really good photos too. Thank you for sharing them.

That is interesting that the kestrel is also mocking the kite. I've not seen that before with another bird of prey.

I think perhaps you did see a dark version Marsh Harrier ? Or a juvenile ?? Did you get a glimpse of under the wings by any chance to notice any colour/lightness?

And I loved your garden visitors photos too. That's nice to have a woodpecker visitor. And the sparrowhawk!
- did you hear any of the birds do an alarm call first before she came ?

I feed my birds here every day and whenever a human comes near a few of them will call out in alarm and all the birds will dart off to hide!
I call them out again with my secret call to them :) so they know it is safe to come out again. I even feed a few little brown wood mice too. As soon as I arrive with their food I call to them, (one call is a 'hello' call and another is my 'alarm/aware' call to them) and the birds all start to fly over and usually I will see a wood mouse or two come out of the leaf litter and come towards me. I place the food down and everyone eats!!
It's such a privilege to see them every day.
Just a note - I never put more than 2 fat balls in a holder (I cut my wire holders in half to make smaller ones), as the top balls weight can fall down onto the sparrows by chance, so it is too risky for them to put their head thru the lower mesh incase a ball falls on them.
A little while ago I put up 2 small nest boxes, just for the blue tits to winter over in, and I added a few more roosting pouches into my little woodland for them. There are about 12 roosting pouches all dotted about in the undergrowth now, as I couldn't get to grips with these tiny little feathered beings keeping warm at night time!! hahaha, and I wanted to keep them warm I actually sewed on waterproof linings and covers to all the pouches, and I handsewed 4 pouches myself from some coir pockets I had.

Have you ever had any long tailed tits ? I had a flock of 6 fly thru one day, which is the first time it has ever happened! Maybe they were off to find new territory?

Thank you!

Yes, I felt very lucky with the Muntjac encounter, very much a right-place, right-time moment after all the times I've been near my 'own' deer but the camera was at home

Kestrels do often have a go pestering buzzards, when I'm working I'll hear the irritated whittling sort of noise they make when they're mobbing something (similar to the sound you hear from nest sites) and glance up, to see there's a buzzard who's come too low in a kestrel's territory and is being driven off. They don't mind high buzzards soaring, but if they're low down they're seen as intruding/threatening and aren't given a moment's peace.

I'm afraid I didn't see the underwings, no. It was quite a way off and the photos taken at the limit of my zoom give a much clearer view of the bird than I had in person - it was the mostly the flight habit and outline which stood out as wait-that's-not-a-buzzard, and the location being known for harriers which filled in the possible alternative ID

Weirdly enough there never seem to be alarm calls when the sparrowhawks come through, just a moment when the small birds disappear into cover all at once. It's rather eerie, the way it goes from the usual chirping chatter, to instant total silence as soon as the mass flutter of wings is over.

The roosting pockets sound such a lovely idea, a great extra way to help them on top of providing food, and do I hope they use them!

I've had long-tailed tits a few times, yes, I see a lot more of them at work and the pony field but occasionally in the garden, too. They are usually in groups, wherever I see them.

Here's one looking especially cute...

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And another with the long tail in view...

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Lovely pics

Fantastic pictures I missed!

Superb photos and wonderful range of species!!!

George wrote:

Thank you!

Yes, I felt very lucky with the Muntjac encounter, very much a right-place, right-time moment after all the times I've been near my 'own' deer but the camera was at home

Kestrels do often have a go pestering buzzards, when I'm working I'll hear the irritated whittling sort of noise they make when they're mobbing something (similar to the sound you hear from nest sites) and glance up, to see there's a buzzard who's come too low in a kestrel's territory and is being driven off. They don't mind high buzzards soaring, but if they're low down they're seen as intruding/threatening and aren't given a moment's peace.

I'm afraid I didn't see the underwings, no. It was quite a way off and the photos taken at the limit of my zoom give a much clearer view of the bird than I had in person - it was the mostly the flight habit and outline which stood out as wait-that's-not-a-buzzard, and the location being known for harriers which filled in the possible alternative ID

Weirdly enough there never seem to be alarm calls when the sparrowhawks come through, just a moment when the small birds disappear into cover all at once. It's rather eerie, the way it goes from the usual chirping chatter, to instant total silence as soon as the mass flutter of wings is over.

The roosting pockets sound such a lovely idea, a great extra way to help them on top of providing food, and do I hope they use them!

I've had long-tailed tits a few times, yes, I see a lot more of them at work and the pony field but occasionally in the garden, too. They are usually in groups, wherever I see them.

Here's one looking especially cute...

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And another with the long tail in view...

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that's pretty precious to have your 'own' deer! how magnificent!! it would be such a joy to see them and 'know' them like that. What a blessing you have in your life George!

thanks for explaining about the buzzard and kestrels. I understand!

Are you a member of any bird societies to help identify the raptor ? here in Scotland they have the SOC.

perhaps there was no warning for the sparrowhawk because it may have pinpointed the caller ?
I've seen one dart thru the little wood here. It was quite a thrill because it was my first sparrowhawk and I had to do a doubletake. It was amazing to see how skilfully it swooped and rose thru the leafy branches!

Yes I hope they are making use of the pockets. I never want to check on them, incase I disturb the birds nearby, so I just keep a positive thought that at night they are all huddled warmly in there ha ha

I've seen a group of about 12 long tailed tits not far from here (less than 10 miles away), so I knew they travelled in groups. Just never seen any around my bit.
Your photos are excellent George!! You are a very good photographer by the way;) amazing feather and eye detail.

it's great to talk about birds with someone who knows about them too :)
As far as I know I'm the only bird lover around here (in my area). Sometimes I think it would be nice if someone else started putting out fat balls and feed for them. That way I would know that they are loved by another human too hahaha

Very cool pics again