Wednesday, 3 August 2011

Wings for Wednesday

As I mentioned last Friday, Thursday afternoon found a large flock of gulls which spent a lot of time soaring and diving above the village. At first I though they may have been using any thermals from the built up area to gain height but on a longer observation they were diving about too much for that. In fact their flight activity was much the same as that observed when watching Swallows. On second thoughts I assumed they were feeding. I couldn't see anything but I guess the farming activity nearby may have been driving a lot of insect life up into the air.

Fortunately they continued their activities for a while after we had returned home from our afternoon perambulations so I was able to stand in the garden with the 50D and its 100-400mm lens. It was quite a feat to keep any birds in the viewfinder, never mind about focussed. As the gulls were flying all over the place I left the lens on auto focus though I did shorten the focussing range so it didn't have to hunt too much.

Seagull 5

Seagull 4

Seagull 3

Seagull 2

Seagull 1

It looks to me as though the flock was Black Headed Gulls, or at least all those I managed to get in reasonable focus were.

While we were out and about I took a short piece of video with the Lumix TZ7:

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6 comments:

  1. ADRIAN3 August 2011 at 07:41

    Great shots here.

    ReplyDelete
  2. holdingmoments3 August 2011 at 07:48

    Good captures John.
    Never easy catching them in flight, but good fun trying.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Glo4 August 2011 at 07:43

    Excellent photos. Could they be Napoleon gulls? Perhaps they're inviting you to the seaside :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Midmarsh John5 August 2011 at 13:47

    Thank you Adrian.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Midmarsh John5 August 2011 at 13:48

    Thank you Keith. The main problem is not falling over backwards when they pass overhead ;)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Midmarsh John5 August 2011 at 14:00

    Glo: They were probably escaping all the visitors at the seaside. The Napoleon Gull isn't in my 'Complete Guide' but looking on the net it does look very much the same as our Black Headed Gull.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for visiting. Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Any comment, or correction to any information or identification I get wrong, is most welcome. John

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