David Element's Wildlife Web Page Birds 113

David Element

Wildlife Photography and Digital Video Images

___________________________________________________________________________Birds 113 – Eurasian Sparrowhawks

EURASIAN SPARROWHAWK Accipiter nisus (f)

· This splendid female Eurasian Sparrowhawk Accipiter nisus was photographed preening herself in a London park not much more than 20 feet away from the photographer, a quite exceptionally close range for such a shy and elusive (albeit common) subject. When the Sparrowhawk landed the photographer had two extension rings sandwiched between his 400mm lens and the camera body in order to obtain extreme close-ups of small birds but this approach gave a limited distance range and he couldn't focus on the Sparrowhawk as it was just too far away. His first task was to remove these rings as quickly as he could without disturbing the hawk and he initially had to hold them with his little finger whilst taking the first part of the sequence until he could slip them into a pocket. He was amazed that he was able to do this and also later on to be able to remove a video camera from his bag in full view of a bird with far better eyesight than his own! It was fortunate that the sun stayed out as quite a lot of cloud had been obscuring it for much of the afternoon, that there was no vegetation in the way and that there were no human disturbances for 15 minutes at a normally very well populated location until another birdwatcher approached and inadvertently scared the hawk away.

· During this period some moving images were also captured and David’s films of Eurasian Sparrowhawks may be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PY_exYPIhI and: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmckhr41USM. A very lucky capture!

· David has published two books containing photographs of Eurasian Sparrowhawks, one large-scale on photographic quality paper and the other as a small softcover book (and therefore much cheaper). These can be previewed in full on-line by using this hyperlink: https://www.bobbooks.co.uk/bookshop?page=1&search=david+element.

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