Photographs of Peregrines 3

Location: Chichester Cathedral, Chichester, West Sussex^[info] (50.836286, -0.780641 [Google Maps] [maps.live.com] [multimap])

Tags: Birds, Britain, Buildings and Architecture, Cathedrals and Churches, Chichester, Chichester Cathedral, England, Europe, Falcons, Peregrine, West Sussex, Wildlife and Nature

Dates: started Sunday, 20th March 2005

The best pics are at the bottom of this page, or on page 2. Skip on if you're impatient - I've deleted a lot of duplicates, but I'm sure not many people will want to wade through the whole gallery.

It seems like every year, after spending cash on better equipment, I get just slightly better photos of the Peregrines on Chichester Cathedral. The first year, the pics I took were with a 3x zoom lens which just about captured enough information to identify the bird by shape. Last year the 10x zoom on my camera allowed me to see markings etc. This year the 10x zoom lens was beefed up with a 1.7x attachment, and you can just see the glint in the bird's eye, even if the pics are grainy and heavily cropped. Maybe next year I'll have a telescope attached to a camera, and get... well, just slightly better pictures.

I first saw one bird this year on Monday 7th March (about 6pm), but as it was getting dark and the bird was flying away, I pretty much identified it by call - certainly no photographic evidence. So I decided to check again as I went shopping this Saturday, when I took the first set of photos here. These didn't seem to be very good - on the tiny camera screen they all appeared to be of a headless bird, and the sun was in the wrong place so they looked washed out - so I decided to walk on to Fishbourne. I had a pretty rotten day there photography-wise too, so I got my shopping and walked back. The Peregrine seemed to be showing better, so despite five bags of shopping I decided to take some more pics, only for my last set of batteries to conk out - this after only a few minutes use at Fishbourne. Deciding that I was fated not to get a single decent pic that entire day, I walked home in a huff.

After a while I settled down and decided to try again. I couldn't go back without charged batteries, so I started to open up my remote controls etc. at home in a search for four AAs. My torch has four, so I opened it up to find that I'd left it on when I'd last upgraded my computer, so they were flat also. Foiled again! But then I noticed that they were a different brand to my normal ones, hunted down a pack of 20 I'd stashed in a cupboard and forgotten about, and went back to the Cathedral. With the sun at my back and some lovely old stonework to prop my lens on, I managed to get shots not only of the Peregrine sitting on the Cathedral, but also a second bird in flight.