The things you see

This week hubby and I took a walk along the sea front at Hill Head.  We parked near Titchfield Haven and walked right round to the main carpark and back.  On the way back hubby spotted a hawk hovering just behind some beach huts.  By the time I'd got the camera switched on, zoomed in and the focus on the hawk it had dived.  Muttering naughty things under my breath I put the camera away only to have the hawk fly not 10 feet from me, with its prey, and land about 50 feet behind me on the stump of a breakwater.

Being the brave soul that I am I got the camera out again, switched it on and started snapping, moving forwards 5 feet or so after a few shots.  Eventually the bird spotted me and shot me a nasty look so I stayed still and took a few more shots.  Here's the best one - if you don't like to see half-eaten corpses don't look.

This image has been much fiddled with, using Paint Shop Pro, to bring out the clarity and sharpness as my camera lens isn't powerful enough to get up close. 

I'm beginning to pine for a camera with changeable lenses, so that I can get really close to nature.  At the moment the blue tit parents are feeding their fledged babies in the trees around my garden.  Those birds NEVER keep still for more than a second or two, barely long enough to focus in.  And it's a pain trying to get close enough to get a close-up without them seeing you and flying off.  Anyway, here are my best efforts.

The top image was taken just as the parent bird took off.  The bottom image is of a baby.  Amazingly, the babies can fly but still need their parents to feed them.

Then to cap it all, yesterday I saw this.

They flew right past me, far too busy playing at piggy-backs to notice my presence.  The one on top was really buzzing his wings.  The pitch kept changing and got quite high at one point before stopping completely for a few seconds before starting again.  All I can say is, lucky them!