We are well and truly into the Summer doldrums as far as birding is concerned. Very few "good" birds are appearing and those that are tend to be brief. I dipped on a one-day marsh sandpiper last week at Pennington. So, with a day at Rutland on Wednesday for the ospreys at River Gwash I thought I ought to get in some practice at birds in flight. I immediately thought of Lakenheath, which throughout Summer has a healthy population of both breeding and transient hobbies. These small flacons are mega fast, hunting and feeding on the wing. In the early Summer they are after dragonflies and later on move onto house martins even catching them in level flight!!!
After a brief stop on the way at Fen Drayton to hear a great reed warbler (and get a very dodgy flight view of it!) I got to Lakenheath just as the day was starting to warm up. This is a very large RSPB reserve in East Anglia, near Newmarket. It used to be famous for having breeding golden orioles but it lost them a few years back. Now it is a giant reed bed and known for hobbies, bitterns, cranes and bearded tits.
The very pleasant man in the centre assured me the hobbies were still around so I walked out to the area just beyond Joist fen where I could see a couple of other photographers already in place. The weather although bright was very breezy even where we were, sightly sheltered by the trees. On the upside, there were lots of dragonflies already on the wing.
Almost abefore I got my camera set up though it wasn't a hobby which took my interest. A bittern flopped up out of the reeds on the our right and flew over to next marsh!
Over the next few hours we got some really god views of at least 3 bitterns flying around the marsh. One came ridiculously close but I only knew that when it flew out of the reeds almost under my feet before I could react and get a shot! They breed here and were moving between nests and feeding grounds.
Another surprise was the number of cuckoos we saw. It is always good for them here but we got 3 in the air at once, calling and partaking in what looked like territorial disputes.
Before we move onto the hobbies the last fly by was a bird of a totally different sort. The USAF have a large base nearby and Tom Cruise was being very active today.
So, onto what I came for, the hobbies. As the day got warmer they started to hunt more and more. There were two or three in our area and you started to get a feel for their pattern of behaviour.
One in particular was reasonably close and it would spend some time perched in a nearby tree. From here it would fly down and hunt over the reeds and channels. It was incredibly fast in the air, constantly banking and turning. Trying to capture it was, how shall we say, challenging. Even more so as I had my 500mm lens hand-held to try and track them.
The bottom one of this set shows the bird to its best, with the stripes on its belly and that raptors piercing eye. It is slightly spoiled by the reeds in the way. It was way below our feet at the time but only 20 yards away!
What you could see though was the behaviour when they caught dragonflies. They would then climb up and eat them on the wing.
They have a number of prey items, at least one in each talon. They then go into a slow(er) circle wildly they rip them apart and was the juicy bits before diving back down again to have another go.
After a few cycles of this it would return to the tree and have 20 or 30 minutes digestion time before starting again.
With the weather getting pretty warm and even the hobbies getting a bit less frequent I left before the traffic got too bad. A great day with 3 fantastic birds. Really good to be able to spend time watching their behaviour. I think I will go back and have another go though!!
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