Herons

The herons on our village pond are quite used to the traffic noise and passers-by and so are very obliging when it comes to being photographed. I don't know why they are called grey herons because these are most certainly blue.

Strange pose of this one, it had spotted a goldfish,(there are several in the pond) and he appeared to get annoyed with it. By the angle of its foot I thought it might going to stamp on it.

With the angle of the setting sun reflecting off the water gave the appearance of an actor in front of the stage footlights.

This one is an actor playing the part of a swan.

The village pond

 Encouraged by the earlier walks I did the same this evening and on the way I passed the village pond and spotted a family of young coots .

 On one of the posts surrounding the pond a young green woodpecker sat motionless thinking I hadn't seen him. He was still there when I left to go home.

Standing guard over the pond stood a young heron keeping a watchful eye on the other  youngsters.

New set up

 Numerous troubles that I have had computer-wise have now gone thanks to a genius and the parting of a three figure sum. I spent a little time exploring other parts of my new patch. I have plenty of ponds and rivers around me that have a variety of wildlife.

 They a good feeding area's for lapwings and egrets.

 And of course the rabbit is everywhere.

Deciding to give the peregrines a rest for a while I tried a local sand pit some miles away from the nest and to my surprise the first thing that I saw was the male peregrine with a kill.

Peregrines at play

 Problems with windows 10 have brought my blogging to a standstill but it hasn't stopped me from my photography. Over the past week I have paid many visits to the peregrines and have enjoyed the spectacle of the young birds at play.

 Don't quite know what the game was but they certainly enjoyed playing it.

The lower bird loved turning upside down and did it several times.

Worn out after playing for about 20 minutes they settled down to wait for their evening meal. The pictures were taken with a 600m lens with 2x converter and of course hand held at a distance of about 400ft.
Just as a matter of interest I've scrapped windows 10 and reverted to  7pro.

Barn owl

Popping down the road this evening to check on perigrine family No 2 and waiting around for almost an hour this chappie turned up. He entertained me for some time.

He made several sorties into the long grass but to no avail he caught nothing.

He came quite close on occasion and was not bothered by my presence.

Meanwhile I realised I was not the only observer, a perigrine was watching him too.