Kestrel

My apologies for the lengthy gap since my last post. The last few weeks have not been great – my father died after a long battle against cancer and my wife has been into hospital a couple of times, but is now much better. To get back into the swing of things, here's an interesting angle on one of my favourite birds. It was using the uppermost branch of a tree to scan for small mammals without the need to expend energy hovering in flight. Most of the time, its head was bowed, moving methodically from left to right in search of likely prey. Every once in a while, however, it would raise its head to the horizon, providing this unusual perspective on a beautiful little raptor. I only wish the light had been kinder; don't be fooled by the shutter speed – today on the North Norfolk coast it was a bleached out grey day offering little in the way of depth and contrast.

Canon 1Ds MkII, Canon 100-400mm IS L USM lens, 1/1,000th sec, f/5.6, 400mm at ISO 500