The kestrels of lands end

Whilst visiting lands end & taking a walk along the coastline, we first got a fleeting glimpse of a bird of prey as it swooped across the cliffs. We ‘ sure what it was but after numerous sightings later in the day ‘ pretty sure it was a kestrel. We watched these beautiful birds looking for prey all along the coast that day. We saw a male and a juvenile bird in different places. We even saw them together on a rock at one point, unfortunately they were about 100 metres away so I ‘ have a chance of getting a photo of that. I did manage to get a shot of the juvenile on its own later on however.

After that we also caught up with the adult male. Viewing these birds in this habitat really made the trip worthwhile. This was the day after me having a conversation saying that I hadn’t seen any kestrels in Cornwall since moving down here!

A nest of swallows

I only just got around to processing some pictures from back in june, i need to stop working so hard, or just stop being lazy im not sure which it is. Whilst visiting ‘lizard point’, the most southerly point in england, I happened upon a nest of swallows. After waiting for a long time to make sure the parents were ok with us being there, I got a few pictures of them coming into feed the chicks.

The nest was located in the rafters of an old abondoned building with no window panes, looking directly out onto the sea. It was pretty dark in there so I had to resort to using flash, but it allowed fast shutter speeds to freeze the wing beats of the parent bird. These parent birds would swoop through the window with beaks full of bugs for the chicks, only staying on the nest for a matter of seconds before going out to find more food. It made capturing the moment they were fed challenging.