Compare the tail feathers with the picture from @Proterra just above.
My vote is sparrowhawk.
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The fan of barred tail feathers is a dead giveaway …… Sparrowhawk
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All the three…
…vultures (Turkey) were eying me simultaneously but I told them I was way too young for that.
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Tricky one to take this. Far distance on a gloomy early evening, near a lake in Galicia, Spain, last month. Look who’s on guard…
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Puffy
It is while the birds are in the midst of changing position, still maintaining a balance, that they show us their most interesting sides.
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The bottom picture is a black-headed gull with chick. Nice picture.
Thankfully one of our more common sea gulls in the British isles.
Yep in summer plumage also one of our most common and noisiest rubbish tip gulls.
Yes we have many many on the coastal marshes here. Last year I saw a lesser black backed gull having grabbed a chick and was slowly swallowing it having taken off… the poor raging was petrified as it was slowly ingested… there were several black headed gulls attacking lesser black backed from above behind and below… plus an avocet joining in…. But the larger gull survived the onslaught and fully swallowed the chick … it was really violent and in a way disturbing, but that’s nature.
I did take a series of pictures with my 800mm but I won’t post here as it is distressing,
Way ahead of everyone else
An American Goldfinch rushing to acquire winter colors while all his brothers are still bright yellow.
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A juvenile Swallow at Castle Roy in the Cairngorms. There are many Swallows gathering on the lines now but, if past experience is anything to go by, some of our coastal ones will be here until November or later.
Cheers,
Ian
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The flight surfaces of a Little Egret flying out to the beach on the Suffolk Coast
A Little Egret about to eat a frog in its beak - in the marshes.
… and now looking for desert
…and found it, a moreish Stickleback
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Got to spend some quiet time outdoors today and a bunch of cows slowly made their way across the meadow, along with a few Herons who kept them company, travelling closely with the herd.
I wonder what the symbiotic relation between them is? I had thought Herons just ate fish and as I didn’t see them go for any insects or bugs that might have been dragged up by the grass munchers, that seems to remain the case. Yet there must be something going on between them. Perhaps smaller mammals, frogs etc. get a bit of a fright on when the cows come home and they have a go for them?
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