Sometimes the audio is a little subdued, this is because at times I need to speak in a quiet voice so as not to disturb the birds in front of me.

The session yesterday started with real excitment and finished up even better.  I managed to get in to the hide without disturbing any birds even though there was one of the youngsters on the branch just in front of the  hide when I got there. Using the tree and hide as a shield, I slid in on my back to get inside, the bird had again departed but within seconds was back and very excitingly for me, he had a small song abird in his talons.  This is the first time that I have been lucky enough to be able to photograph this at close range and I was thrilled.  He proceeded to eat it and after a short time one of his sisters flew in to join him.  To my surprise he flew off after let his sibling take the prey from him.  There was no tussle, noise or argument, he was quite content to allow his larger and stronger sister take the prey from him.  This was interesting behaviour proving perhaps that right from the start of their lives, young males are sub-dominant to the larger females of the species.

I continued to watch and wait and not too much later the young male returned acting very excitedly.  This time I was set up to try and catch some in flight action and I snapped off the camera as he landed.  When I looked up and out I could see that beneath him the female was also in the tree and she was plucking prey.  I was very excited at this because this was just the kind of behaviour that I wanted to photograph. Within minutes and with the youngster calling excitedly and expectantly, the adult flew up withthe prey.

I quickly swapped lenses being careful to be as quiet and discreet as I could be. There was a lot of noise and commotion going on and this helped to mask the sound of the shutter which is something that I am sure disturbs the adults. I managed to photograph both birds as the feeding took place. In the end, this turned out to be the highlight of 3 years work…..if you can call it work…. I had planned to be in the right place at the right time in the hope of getting the shots that I wanted and it was paying of for me. Can you image being there and having all this wild activity going on just in front of you, a real privilege.

When I looked through the viewfinder and I knew that I had photographed the female so close I was ecstatic. She continued to pick small pieces of her prey to feed the youngster. Judging by the colour the kill looked to be a Collared Dove with noticeable white underwings and the creamy buff feather colour quite evident.  If you compare the image above with that of the adult male that I took last week then you can clearly see the differences in the two sexes. Here is a link to last weeks picture.