Fantastic Day Out

11 November 2008 By Paul 0

Ok, after last weekends dissapointment, Janey and I decided to get our cameras ready and go back to Stockley in the hope of catching the Harris Hawks we missed last time.

We took the usual route through the golf course to get to the lakes, stopping to take a few photos of a pair of Coots. The sun was fairly low on the sky by this point and as it was directly in front of us, the Coots were a bit of a pig to capture. Still, we managed to get a few shots off before we continued our walk through the park.

While we were photographing some wall flowers and some fungi, we heard a pickup coming towards us. The driver of the pickup had a loudhailer hangingn out of the window, on which was playing bird distress calls. If the bird scarers were about again, we could be lucky...

Walking round the main lake we took some photos of the trees we had planned last week. I've no idea what theses trees are, but they always look interesting, so we got some more snaps.

Walking round the back of the lake we stopped to get some ducks, Coots and Moorhen, before moving off with thoughts of a pint firmly in mind.

As we approached the pub we were amazed to see three stands with Birds standing on them. Two contained the Harris Hawks we failed to photograph last time, but the third contained a falcon of some kind. Being careful not to spook the birds we got a close as we dared and fired off 30-40 photos a piece before wandering into the pub for a well deserved pint.

Halfway through out pints, the birds handler came back to we took the opportunity to ask permission for the photos we took and if it was OK to take some more. The Lanner Falcon, it turned out to be, had just finished it's moult so was raring to get up and fly. Lanners are absolutely beautiful birds, nice bluey grey wings with a speckled cream underbelly. This one in particular had a lovely personality too. and was only too happy to pose for us whilst we snapped away.

We retired to the pub for another pint soon after, spending most of the time whizzing through the pics on the back of out D80's.

What a day...