Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2010/08/12

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Subject: [Leica] Raptor day today
From: imra at iol.ie (Douglas Barry)
Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2010 01:27:04 +0100

After Ken's picture today, I was amazed to look out through my kitchen 
window this evening in twilight's gathering gloom and see this. We had a 
fire on Bray Head tonight which burned some of the dry gorse and I had put 
my head against the window when I spotted a movement in the near dark. At 
present, a thousand starlings nest each night in a tall tree in my garden. 
It's a wonderful sight as they wheel and whirl acrobatically around the tree 
before they settle down for the night. Tonight, it seems there was one less.

Turning out the lights I called the family who were suitably blown away by 
the sight. My youngest said get a photo and I thought the light was so bad 
that it would be crap. But I grabbed the Nikon D200, flashgun, and sneaked 
out to watch the hawk - female sparrowhawk, I think - dine al fresco in the 
very dark twilight. I wormed my way along the house terrified I'd scare it 
away and when I got close enough started to shoot with the flash. Amazingly, 
it ignored the flash and clunk of the camera, before eventually getting 
spooked when I coughed. It flew off with its prey into a nearby tree and 
continued its meal. This was taken from about 15 feet away. My son 
speculated that the fire on Bray head tonight may have driven it to pastures 
new. Guess there won't be starlings on my tree no more...

http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/DouglasBray/Bray+Town/hawk1.jpg.html

Douglas
_________
Douglas Barry
Bray, Co. Wicklow
Republic of Ireland 



Replies: Reply from jhnichols at lighttube.net (Jim Nichols) ([Leica] Raptor day today)
Reply from kcarney1 at cox.net (Ken Carney) ([Leica] Raptor day today)