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.











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: