Birds In Flight... Upload your photos.

[Game Warden]

@Dave Williams And a perfect 10 score for a fantastic series. Stunning. Can you tell us a bit more, tech specs etc?

 

Matt

[Dave Williams]

@Game Warden all my Flickr posts show full EXIF. You can choose to hide that information on Flickr but I don't purely as a decision I made to save me the effort of adding info on my Big Year posts. Click on a photo and it's all there.

PS Thanks for the compliment!

[Dave Williams]

Sorry, I didn't mention, the Gannets in the photos above were taken off a charter fishing boat in Liverpool Bay which can be seen from where I live in North Wales. Yesterday I sat on dry land in glorious sunshine with just me , my camera and a few sheep for company as I enjoyed the local Great Cormorant population flying in the wind for the pure joy of it.

 

Great Cormorant     Phalacrocorax carbo by Dave Williams, on Flickr

[KaingU Lodge]

We just finished placing our island hide that we build every year for the white fronted bee eaters.  I couldn't resist trying it out for an hour yesterday afternoon.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Soukous]

more please @KaingU Lodge

[Dave Williams]

@KaingU Lodge I'm surprised how few places I have visited, particularly Africa and Asia, seem to have photographic hides. There has to be huge potential I would have thought. 

Your Bee-eater perch isn't perfect by any means but if you can get them to regularly land you could set up an artificial one to get better shots with uncluttered background.

This was not exactly perfect either, and this was a professional, well, a rented hide anyway, in Bulgaria.

14311541983

If you click on the link you will see the picture.

There were two many twigs left on this artificial perch, the ruin flight shots and have no practical purpose. For your hide I would make the perch higher so you get some clear flight shots.

You can read my blog about it here:-

https://davewilliamsnaturephotography.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/bulgaria-day-3-may-20th.html

 

Hope that you don't mind my comments.

cheers

Dave

Edited July 26, 2017 by Dave Williams

[Peter Connan]

You guys are making me jealous!

 

Some great new additionts.

[offshorebirder]

Apologies for yet another Black Skimmer flight photo.  But I had a nice encounter with them last weekend and thought I would share one of the better shots that came out.  

 

Side note:  why is it your best photo ops for Black Skimmers always happen on cloudy days?   Maybe they come closer to people in low light...

 

 

[Peter Connan]

As far as I am concerned you will never need to aplogise for a photo like that! Great capture @offshorebirder!

[Dave Williams]

@offshorebirder I'm very envious, a bird I'd love to see never mind photograph. That's a cracker.

[offshorebirder]

Thanks for the kind words @Peter Connan and @Dave Williams.

 

Dave - if you'd ever like to see Black Skimmers skimming, I would be glad to show you 'round coastal South Carolina some time. 

[Dave Williams]

@offshorebirder That's an offer that's hard to refuse and most kind of you. You never know, I might take you up on it!

[Dave Williams]

Leach's Storm Petrels are usually to be found out on the ocean but when the wind blows hard from a certain direction they get blown up the river Mersey estuary then fly out again later skimming the beach looking rather like an approaching bat as they flutter over the sand.

Leach's Storm Petrel by Dave Williams, on Flickr

[Dave Williams]

My first ever magazine cover ! This months edition of the Journal of Applied Ecology publicising Dr Cat Horwill's research paper on "Density dependence and marine bird populations: are wind farm assessments precautionary?"

It's a Herring Gull chasing a Puffin in an attempt to get it to drop it's catch of Sand Eels, taken on the Isle of May,Scotland June 2016 where Cat was doing some of her research.

[michael-ibk]

Congratulations Dave, it's a great cover indeed. 

[Peter Connan]

Indeed a worthy cover image!

[pomkiwi]

A bit less serious.

 

Cockatoos (Appropriate collective would be a screech of cockatoos). Photographed above the Chamberlain Gorge, Kimberley, Western Australia.

 

 

[Geoff]

1 hour ago, pomkiwi said:

Cockatoos (Appropriate collective would be a screech of cockatoos).

 

@pomkiwi Mark, they are Little Corellas.

[pomkiwi]

@Geoff Thank-you.

 

[Peter Connan]

When we moved into this house on April Fool's day, 2011, one of the first things we did was to plant a couple of trees. One of these was a Fever tree so weak and spindly that we had to tie it up for the first couple of years.

 

Even before moving in though, we added a porch across the front of the house.

 

Right now, there are two bird's nests in that fever tree, and the porch is in an ideal vantage point to observe them...

 

 

[michael-ibk]

A Carmine Bee-Eater from last week in Mana Pools:

 

 

[Whyone?]

Black Skimmer, SW Florida

 

IMG_2825 by Whyone, on Flickr

[Whyone?]

Mana Pools National Park last week:

 

2R4C7164 by Whyone, on Flickr

 

Sadly populations of this beautiful bird are crashing and it was upgraded to 'Critically Endangered' by Red List in 2015. The already small population is declining at an extremely rapid rate owing to a variety of threats including poisoning, persecution and ecosystem alterations.

[Peter Connan]

Great additions @michael-ibk and @Whyone?

[Soukous]

Southern Carmine Bee eaters

South Luangwa, Zambia