I had what I would describe as a rotten day today with a few nice little bits thrown in here and there to keep me sane. I went over to the shops at the end of the day to pick up some food for the rest of the week. As I was returning I got a call and was chatting away while driving through an area in central Ireland called the Curragh (where the horse racing track is) Plains. Since I started doing wildlife photography my eyes have sharpened up to notice little things.<\/p>\n
Zooming along at (the speed limit, officer) a quick pace I see this flash of brown sitting on the fence. I park at the end of the plains and finish the call.<\/p>\n
I knew it was a bird of prey. A small one, falcon shaped. There are no Peregrines here because a mound of clay breaks the horizons in these parts. It was not bulky enough for a Buzzard, which is a hawk. And it was too small for one of the wandering Red Kites. It was too big for a Hobby or a Merlin. That left me with one remaining option. I grabbed my binoculars from the car boot, regretting that my camera gear wasn\u2019t there. \u201cAh\u201d, I thought, \u201cIt\u2019ll be long gone by now\u201d.<\/p>\n
I wandered over and scanned as I walked. I saw the little blob on the concrete fence in the distance. I moved closer, a bit at a time as I took a close look through the glasses. Eventually I found myself within 15 metres of her. She was a Kestrel, perched with her brown back to the sun, watching the cars zip by within 8 feet of her. Occasionally she\u2019d face me, her yellow-rimmed eyes catching the light. Now I really was gutted I hadn\u2019t got my camera with me. I sat down, just to relax. She was chilled out so why shouldn\u2019t I be?<\/p>\n
10 minutes of chilling with this little fantastic \u201cwind hover\u201d (they hover to scan for small prey beneath them) and the real world crept back in. I have a chapter to submit on Sunday and a concurrent one to complete. I stood back up and started backing away. I was a bit worried that maybe she\u2019d been hit and stunned by a car. It was OK, she took off and flew about 50 yards away to park again on the fence.<\/p>\n
10 minutes of chilling out with one of the wonders of nature was a nice way to cap today off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had what I would describe as a rotten day today with a few nice little bits thrown in here and there to keep me sane. I went over to the shops at the end of the day to pick up some food for the rest of the week. As I was returning I got … Continue reading “The Simple Pleasures in Life”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}