Peregrine Displays

 Some documentary shots of the courtship display of the Peregrine pair that have returned St Albans. The female has a rather tatty tail but it didn't seem to affect her manoeuvrability. Hopefully someone in our Nature Group with more pixels than my camera has some better shots.

Peregrine St Albans Cathedral

Great to record the Peregrine falcon hopefully nesting on St Albans Cathedral - rather distant but unmistakable! The lakeside birds are all getting ready for breeding with many squabbles and displays.

Summer Leys Northampton

Common blue Damselflies were abundant on Monday, many of them making short work of reducing the rest of the insect population at Summer Leys, such as this Green Leafhopper - one of my favourite faces in the insect world. The plant bugs proved the most photographed group in terms of species, followed by the flies and then the bees. I photographed a distant raptor thinking it was a Hobby but turned out to be a Peregrine!

Birds on Brownsea Island

We visited Brownsea Island yesterday on a bright sunny day but with a very strong northerly wind. Red Squirrels were sheltering and were not seen but the hides over the lagoon produced some sightings including Greyshank and Redshank, Avocet and Black-tailed Godwit. The Black-headed and Mediterranean Gulls (black heads and no black on primaries) were beginning to pair up. Most exciting view was of a Peregrine repeatedly flying at the flocks of waders.

Peregrines in Cambridge

For the fourth (?fifth) year, Peregrines are nesting on one of Cambridge's tall buildings. Such a treat to see them at relatively close quarters even though action photography is difficult in the confined space of the narrow streets and the light direction. We mainly watched the female at the nest site and then flying to nearby buildings but also had a view of the male (second image with a leg ring), which is a smaller bird with whiter white on the side of the nape. They seem to have two young which are pretty well feathered now.