Peregrine Falcon

[JohnC]

The heading should be pere..not peri- I can't change it. (Mod Edit - Job done)

This morning I went to Bath to photograph the peregrines that nested in the box put up on the church in 2006 and obviously I'm disappointed. There's a couple of things I'd like to throw in the ring. The first photo is not edited in any way and shows the size of this bird from my viewpoint and it was taken at 400mm.Without the camera lens it looked like a blob on the pinnacle (one of the small towers around the main one) The bird didn't move all the time so I took the shots at high speed (8fps on a 7D) at 1/500sec ISO 100 f8 when I saw it was still. The camera was on a tripod and I used the Manfrotto 393 gimbal head and also used a remoter switch,I also had the centre red AF point on the bird,the head was small but I did get the AF point on that as well as it's breast. I used spot metering yet it doesn't look sharp to me. I put my 1.4 X extender which unfortunately takes away auto focus because the 100-400 is f4.5 <5.6 and as usual,when I put the lens on manual focus, what looks in focus through the viewfinder showed well out of focus on the LCD- so bad I deleted them and took the 1.4 X off. I don't know whether it's me or not but on manual I can never get as sharp an image as with auto .. I do wonder if even the Canon 600mm would have had the reach- it's probably further than I think- I was on the other side of the river but it's a narrow river. My conclusion is that it's a job for a digiscope due to the small size of the bird.

As an aside what happened was that last year the pair produced chicks but then the male bird failed to return one day and left the female to get them food but this year 'the son' (as they call it) returned to help mom with with feeding of this year's chicks. There was a lot of screeching from a couple of them and I was told that it's the newly fledged asking for food( feral pigeons mainly but unfortunately many other birds-songbirds)) and the mother is telling them to get their own . It's reckoned they've they've killed 1400 pigeons over the years but the dopey pigeons still sit on the roofs of the adjacent buildings.The RSPB are there from 10.00am to 2.00pm with scopes for people to view them I got there at 8.00am.I did get a great view of them through my bins. though. (10 X 42)

I think these may have been digiscoped.
http://www.hawkandowl.org/About_us/n...inesFledge2011

This is their diet for anyone interested.It's quite varied-all birds but a variety.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/bristol/...00/9138316.stm

To give an idea of how high the steeple is here's a stock photo. It's the highest in Bath at 222 ft. The falcon was on one of those 3 smaller towers.This photo was taken by the church, I was across the river. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:St..._dusk_2007.JPG

Not cropped nor edited.


Cropped right in

[FrankMi]

John, it appears that you have taken quite a challenge in trying to photograph these Falcons! I am looking forward to seeing how you progress in your endeavor.

[JohnC]

Thanks to Mod for correcting title spelling. I tried to change the letter but too late to edit I realised maybe I should have deleted the whole word. Know for next time.

Frank-you may be waiting a long time To be honest I realise now I was on mission impossible. I was talking to my neighbour about it today and pointed out about the same distance- no chance, he said. I think where it was, was further than it looks and also the preregrine is, relatively, quite a small bird too. I would like to get back to Rutland Water in the next few weeks as the Osprey chicks are flying around the lake (a reservoir) now. A couple of weeks ago in the hide the chap 2 windows along had a 600mm lens and the nest was about 400metres away so he was struggling. I'll try and sort out this problem with the manual focus too - I had a thought earlier that it could just be the diopter setting. I sort of regretted posting this later, they weren't very inspiring were they so it was good of you to respond - thanks.

[epmi314]

This isn't a very good picture. She was sitting in a tree just a few feet away and my dog was going nuts. I found out why when the bird took off a flew right by my face. I believe this is also a peregrine. Good to know they are around. Keep them coming John, I'll be looking for more.