I was sitting at my desk at work, when I looked out of the window, and high up in the oak tree outside was a white bird. A big white bird. I had no idea what it was.
It looked like a heron, but herons aren’t white, and it looked a little shorter than a heron. Fortunately, Simon recognised it, as he’d seen them before in Dartmouth – it was a Snowy Egret – a small white heron.
It stayed in the tree, preening itself and relaxing, for maybe an hour and a half.
This was the first time I’ve regretted switching to carrying just a pocketable Panasonic Lumix [: UK, US], rather than my Nikon D90 [: UK, US]. I regretted it a lot. I carried the Nikon for a couple of days afterwards, but it didn’t return.
We popped over to a farm shop in Halberton to get a bit of fruit and veg today. On the way there, I spotted a buzzard on a fence-post near the side of the road, but too late to stop. On the way back, I decided to pull the car over just in case it was still there. It was. I managed to get a few quick shots before it got nervous and flew away, and a couple of them turned out ok:
It still didn’t go very far away, but it was nervous, so if we’d tried to follow, it would have flown again pretty quickly. It’s easy to think of them as big tough birds, but when you see them regularly being beaten up by crows, gulls, blue tits and wrens, you start to realise they’ve just big wusses.
One of the things that really surprised me about coming to Devon was how common buzzards are here. I’d only seen one once or twice in Nottinghamshire, but here there are plenty.
Yet somehow, I’ve not managed to get a photo.
They aren’t the friendliest of birds, I suppose. They don’t come close, and although I’ve caught glimpses of them quite near, they’ve mainly been from a moving car on a main road. I got a much better sighting on a wallk a while ago, but I only had my Canon G9 with me – a great camera, but not quick enough to catch a buzzard on the wing.
I got my chance on Sunday. We were walking along Canal Hill, when a buzzard flew across in front of us and perched on the top of a house, right on the nearest corner to us. This time, I had my Nikon D40 in my bag, with my 55-200 VR lens fitted. I only got a couple of shots, but they’re the best I’ve managed so far, so here they are:
On yesterday’s canal photo walk, I snapped like crazy as several terns flew around us attempting to wrestle some bread from the ducks. Most of the shots were blurred, but there were a few good ones in there.
A little play with Photoshop Elements made this one full of blackcurranty goodness.
And although this one could have been sharper, I loved the shape of the wings. I played with the colours a little to give the canal a rather appealing bronze colour.
All taken with my Nikon D40, using Michael’s special VR lens. Woo! VR!
: UK, US], rather than my Nikon D90 [
