With my uninterrupted view of the old gum tree next door, there is always an opportunity to photograph some kind of bird, but the ones I always look out for are the raptors. A number of black sparrowhawks alight on the dead branches in between forays for food among the pigeons I feed - obviously not at the same time, but every year there is a new one and sometimes an older one comes back. They breed up the road at Imhoff's Gift and have identifying rings on their legs. I can watch as their plumage changes from juvenile to mature and some are melanistic in that their colouring is not the norm. All in all, makes identification of birds quite a challenge.
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| Preening its feathers - a lot of time is spent on this! |
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| Juvenile black sparrowhawk nearly completed moulting |
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| Take off - photographer over-excited |
There is occasionally a visit from the smaller red-breasted sparrowhawk, and even less frequently, a peregrine falcon. I spend hours with the camera zoomed in, taking hundreds of photos (fortunately digital so I can delete them all again!), with the ultimate aim of capturing a raptor taking off from a branch. I have even identified the pre-flight movement so that I know when it is all going to happen, but usually the shutter takes too long to open and I just get a picture of a dead branch. So today I could see the bird starting to twitch and sure enough, it took off as I clicked. I was so excited at having achieved my goal of some years that I rushed to download the picture to the computer to admire my handiwork, only to find to my extreme dismay that over-excitement had prevailed and the photo is hopelessly out of focus. But it still captures the movement and will have to do until next time!
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