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April 2004This month has been a successful one for me, with some great opportunities presenting themselves; I took advantage of them, and some excellent pictures were the outcome.
Over Easter I re-visited Gigrin Farm in Wales and took some of my best Red Kite pictures to date, but yet again the blue skies were nowhere to be seen.
Barn owls are regularly hunting around the Somerset Levels and one evening three were flying along a river bank within a couple of hundred yards of each other, with a bonus Short Eared Owl sitting quietly watching from some long grass nearby!
I managed a handful of pictures including the Short Eared Owl. They were all taken with me leaning against the side of my car in the complete open with no cover at all - they just ignored me!
A couple of early morning sessions resulted in some good luck also, as I stumbled upon a small bush overhanging a stream that is regularly visited by a pair of kingfishers. I couldn’t get very close but I did manage to shoot a couple of dozen frames; some were good some were just record shots.
The other bit of good luck was finding a tree that was thick with leaves and, by chance, something caught my eye - sitting on some branches were two baby Tawny owl chicks that couldn’t be more than a week old. I got some excellent pictures but had to use a lens of nearly 1000mm to get close up shots while being a sufficient distance away so as not to disturb them.
I’ve got no plans yet for May, I`ll have to see what happens.
There are various updates this month.
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All images © Copyright Brian Phipps
