[PIC_THREAD] Wildlife, Animals, Birds, Zoo

Soldato
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Just came across these as I was preparing to sell a lens. These were from a Thai island animal shelter :)

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Thanks and yes, was walking home from work and saw it chasing two pigeons so went to investigate and saw the sparrowhawk mantled over a pigeon. Had about 40 minutes with it as it was getting spooked by cars/walkers (car park at leisure centre) but it kept coming back. The sparrowhawk is a juvenile bird from this year.

Nice catch :) Looks like he got the pigeon down into a car park? lol
 
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Thanks and yes, was walking home from work and saw it chasing two pigeons so went to investigate and saw the sparrowhawk mantled over a pigeon. Had about 40 minutes with it as it was getting spooked by cars/walkers (car park at leisure centre) but it kept coming back. The sparrowhawk is a juvenile bird from this year.

Cool :) Saw one at the Falconry display I saw this weekend just gone. Those bright eyes are cool :D
 
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I didn't ask whether it was a male or female :/ At the time I'd forgotten I had set ISO 100 so I was taking all these shots of the birds resting in a shaded area and I didn't notice the aperture lol.

Luckily I was using a little barrier as a support since I don't think I'd manage 400mm 1/30 shots handheld no matter how good the IS is! It wasn't perfectly sharp and it was a pretty short distance but still!


Sparrowhawk by Phal44, on Flickr
 

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Very nice, it's a juvenile bird. Great when you can get so close.

I was about 10m away from the one I took pics of, kept moving up a little every time it moved off due to it being a fairly busy car park. Was using a 300mm (the f4 one) @f5, 1/500, +1/3EC, ISO1600. In retrospect I should have upped the ISO and stopped down a little more (2 or 3 clicks on the ISO and I could've used f6.3/f7.1 for a little more dof).
 
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Great photo of that bird Phal. Did you get any like that of the whole bird?

Not for that one and the others I took whilst the birds were resting between displays. They were stood on small wooden and metal stands so didn't want those in the shot so I zoomed in as much as I could without the extender so I could stay at F4 since it was a bit dark.

Just looked through my shots that I didn't use and there's a half decent one where I can almost see his/her feet but that's about it.
 
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This youngster was ruthless.

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Nice work, Sparrowhawks are total lunatics.

One time I was out in the fens working my short-eared-owl project, and sparrowhawk got involved in an aerial dogfight with a meadow pipit, I was sat in my car watching this meadow pipit flying for it's life, the meadow pipit then flew right towards me, went in through my car window and out of the other side then underneath the car, angry sparrowhawk lands and starts parading around the car looking for it, after a few seconds the fight continued off towards some hay bales, I have no idea if it escaped or not,
 

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Thanks. A lucky mippit, maybe... I don't usually do well with sparrowhawks, see more of them in the winter and usually at ground level on the marshes so hard to get pictures. I spend the winter photographing (and counting) shorties/merlin/hen harrier so hopefully it will be a better one this year i.e. colder so the shorties are up in the day and a lot less rain.

Nice work, Sparrowhawks are total lunatics.

One time I was out in the fens working my short-eared-owl project, and sparrowhawk got involved in an aerial dogfight with a meadow pipit, I was sat in my car watching this meadow pipit flying for it's life, the meadow pipit then flew right towards me, went in through my car window and out of the other side then underneath the car, angry sparrowhawk lands and starts parading around the car looking for it, after a few seconds the fight continued off towards some hay bales, I have no idea if it escaped or not,
 
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