Cattle Egrets

I have just returned from a another trip to Mallorca. Apart from the usual species there is always something different to photograph there. This time I managed to photograph Glossy Ibis, which has only been breeding there for a couple of years. I also spent a bit of time concentrating on Nightingales, a species we don't get here in north west England. I'll post a few images here from my trips, as I add them to my main site. First off are some Cattle Egrets, most of these are of a very tame bird from last October.

Common Scoter

A couple of weeks ago I spent a day at Barrow Lodge in Lancashire. A Common Scoter which is a sea duck had spent a week at a small lake here. Not a rare bird, but a difficult one to get close pictures of, as they spend most of the time in large flocks at sea. It was nice to get a variety of shots, on rough and calm, coloured water. I even managed some flight shots.

Buzzards

It's been a while since I posted images of the Buzzards that I feed in my garden. I found it hard to believe when I checked the dates, but I have been feeding them now for over six years. I do now take them for granted and was thinking the other day how lucky I am and how I would miss them if they weren't here.
With that in mind, I decided that I would regularly take more photographs of them, trying some new and different settings. Here's a few new ones taken this year.

Black Vultures

Another species from last April's trip to Extremadura, Spain is the Black Vulture. They were coming in to feed with the slightly more shy Griffon Vultures which seemed to hide behind them. They were all quite comical as they landed some distance away, before slowly moving in with a galloping waddle. Considering the distance they had travelled, it was interesting that some of them didn't feed, or seem to want to.
There was a carpet of flowering Lavender in front of the hide, it seemed strange to see these huge birds standing among the flowers, but made for some nice shots These and the Griffons are very impressive birds to see up close and it was a great memory for me.

Manx Shearwaters

Back in July last year I was a boat trip from Liverpool. This trip is chartered a couple of times a year (weather dependent) by my friend Richard Steel. With a small group of photographers and birders on board, we head out about 25 miles out of Liverpool Bay. The main species would be Gannets, which would be attracted by the chum and bait thrown overboard. These would be diving very close to the boat and are challenging to photograph. I will feature these in a future post.
A few other species usually turn up including kittiwakes, Fulmers, Great Skuas, a mixture of Gulls and Manx Shearwaters. On this particular trip I tried to concentrate on the latter, as they are a difficult species to photograph. It paid off with some reasonable images.

 

Black Kites

Another species from Spain. These opportunistic scavengers were taking the meat put out for the Griffon and Black Vultures that we were photographing. As were the White Storks in my previous post.