Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Road deaths




There seems to be a sudden increase in road deaths (birds). The stretch of road I cycle down with the children (about 1 mile) had 4 deaths on Sunday compared with 0 the previous two weeks. 2 of these were adults, Blackbird (m) and Chaffinch (m) 1 was a juv Blackbird and 1 was indeterminate (too little left) Goldcrest. And in the village there was another Chaffinch (age uncheked) this a.m. I wonder if this is the stage of the breeding season (knackered adults, inexperienced juvs, or the high wind on Saturday that might have caused this.

Early morning sortie on Monday located breeding Golden plover near the house, + Snipe displaying. Nice skylarks singing and the frog orgy pond full of a zillion tadpoles.

2 comments:

Nick Carter said...

Nice photos, are they digiscoped or have you got a fancy lens now?

Alastair said...

Brian was I think asking how i took the pix a few months ago and rather irritatingly I cracked a joke in reply - sorry Brian. I'm using a Canon S3 digi-camera. It has a lens that does 38mm - 435mm and it has a cracking supermaco feature and excellent image stabilisation. Currently one of these will set u back £270 from Warehouse express. I really like this bit of kit and am about to invest in the x1.4 which for £125 will increase the focal length. Irratating things - sometimes the fous hunts, awkward to put on my Manfrotto (quelle surpris - hate the bloody thing) anyone know of a really decent not too heavy tripod i'm sick of Manfrotto's but can't find anything better - but back to the Canon, it's just ace. Mint bit of kit.