Friday 10 June 2011

Peregrine Evening








Earlier this week I had planned to meet up with Paul to look for Long Eared Owls but poor weather in the East of the County meant a change of plan. I decided to visit a peregrine falcon site I had been made aware of not far from home. The falcons had made their home on a church in the town centre and from what I had heard were giving excellent views. I duly arrived at the church and could immediately hear the loud calls of the birds and could also see one or two long lenses trained on the building.
Unbeknown to me a few days earlier two falcon fledglings had fallen from the church and been taken into care and were to be returned that very evening. My timing couldn't have been better as there was much activity in and around the nest site as the anxious parent birds seemed to know that two of their young were about to be returned to their home. A number of onlookers including a few photographers were also present to record the proceedings.
I had not previously had an opportunity such as this to get up close to peregrines and for the next couple of hours or so I was in my element and managed to obtain some excellent results. I was particularly pleased with the flight shots as these fast fliers are not easy to capture in flight. It was a very interesting evening and the results are shown above with shots of the young birds and adults posing on the church building and some showing these magnificent raptors in flight.
I took around five hundred images but have edited that down to around one hundred which I think are good enough for publication. So there will have to be an additional posting to show some more from the evening. In the meantime I hope my followers enjoy the images shown above and I will post some more in due course.

4 comments:

  1. beautiful bird. just a bit different than ours in the US.

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  2. Well done Brian,that blue sky makes these into wonderful images.

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  3. Hello friends,

    Peregrine is a large crow-sized falcon with a blue-gray back, barred white underparts, a black head and moustache. It can be found nearly everywhere on earth except extreme polar regions, very high mountains and most tropical rainforests. Thanks a lot!

    Wildlife Photographer

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  4. Beautiful shots of the peregrine -- such an amazing bird!

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