Frustrated but pleased

[FUJI]

I could have kicked myself yesterday..................Whenever I can, I take a health giving country walk with a mate.......and when I do I almost always take my SONY A55 DSLr with the 18/200 lens attached................but not yesterday.

It threatened rain so I had just my FUJI F500 EXR Compact in my hand........ Then, within five minutes of home I spotted this Sparrow Hawk perched just above our heads:

Having little time to thing or bother about settings I fired shots as I could......We did disturb him during the first attempt but he setlled on a branch just a little further on, but with his back to us:

Still a great sighting though, because in the wild, they are exceptionally shy and wary:

Best viewed LARGE....Click on Pic:

FUJI

[JohnP]

FUJI...That's a Kestrel.

[annie]

but you still got him...wow!

[FUJI]

FUJI...That's a Kestrel.

CLOSE! ;-)

FUJI

[JohnP]

CLOSE! ;-)

FUJI

Cute little birds Kestrels, they mostly feed on voles, mice, insects and earthworms... plus the odd small bird. It's hard to say for sure but I think this one is a female.

[Heather]

nice capture Fuji, any bird of prey that close is good... we have a kestrel on our common and i spent most of the year

trying to get a decent picture of him ... well done you !

[Kobione]

Agree with Heather, Fuji - well done in getting any shots. I feel the same with my eagle shots, but at least I get them!

[NannyFerret]

Fuji's Kestrel.

I hope you don't mind, but I was bored and needed something to do. I edited it on a program called Zoner Photo Studio 13.

I don't usually edit anyone's pics but I liked this so much and you were lucky to get the pic, so I hope you like what I've done.

[FUJI]

WOW! That makes a heck of a difference Nanny....Thank you...........

Typical of me to spot something like this when I have the wrong camera................against bright sky lighting...and no viewfinder.....But!..What a beautiful little bird?

No. not you Nany....the Kestrel ;-)

THANKS!

FUJI

[NannyFerret]

lol.

I'm glad you weren't offended.

If you are anything like me, then you would keep the photo as reference of what you had seen, no matter how much noise or what camera I had used.

I can't remember if I bought Zoner on Ebay or at a computer fair( I think it was ebay), but it's a brilliant program. I used the magic wand and slected the sky and ran it through noise removal twice, then I inversed the selection and did the bird on a weaker noise removal, and used the painbrush and conttrast setting to paint over the blue bits on his head until it was clearer and the blue had gone.

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