Sitting at my Macbook half an hour or so ago I suddenly noticed a White-bellied sea eagle heading towards the house. I grabbed the new 7D camera and ran onto the roof to take the picture above. For the uninitiated, the eagle is the black and white jobby. OK the light was going but actually I underexposed it and the image is noisy. I also noticed visible vignetting with the 100-400mm lens. All in all a very disappointing shot.
The next moment the blackbird appeared and I had to run downstairs. This time the camera to hand was the 1DmkIII with the 400mm f4 DO lens. A slight improvement even shot at 800 ISO. You get what you pay for. This blackbird is interesting as there is a suggestion of an extension to the yellow eye ring behind the eye, vaguely reminiscent of Hwamei. The underparts also look faintly barred. Odd.
Finally, another Scaly-breasted munia. This one is impersonating a Pitta. No chance of fooling anyone, not even me but a real poser, coming so close I could have trodden on it and definitely too close to focus.
The other decent bird and "new for the patch" was an Osprey. I was sitting on the sun terrace passing the time of day when my bins picked out a distant blob on a rock. My immediate reaction was "another loafing kite". But wait, this has a white top to the blob. Can only be an osprey! Fifteen minutes later it took off and flew towards me and sure enough it was Blobus albinocapo or Pandion haliaetus to its friends. What a real treat to be able to see these raptors whilst drinking coffee. It almost makes up for the fact that I shall be away for 8 of the next 10 days. NOT happy.
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