Breakfast at Ossett

Tuesday was a miserable day with rain on and off throughout the day.

We did have a surprise in the morning though as we spotted a sparrowhawk sitting in the crab apple tree just finishing off its breakfast. We don’t know who it had for breakfast and perhaps it’s better we don’t.

Once spotted it was a case of grabbing a camera as quickly as possible. The expectation is as soon as the camera is trained on the quarry it will take off. I was first to get my camera to hand but it wouldn't play ball or rather the last thing it wanted to focus on was the sparrowhawk. The branches nearby came into focus as clear as a bell but no amount of zooming in and out would focus on the bird. Even with the sparrowhawk filling the entire view finder the image remained frustratingly blurry.

Fortunately she (we think it’s a female) wasn't in a rush to depart on a full stomach and Sue had chance to fire off a few shots as she does, well a barrage of shots in this case. She picked out a few shots for her Wordless Wednesday post here. Amazingly she (the sparrowhawk) seemed to be quite settled and I had time to move windows and try my luck again. This time with more success as my camera suddenly decided to focus on the object in the middle of the screen.

Finally I thought I’d see if I could zoom in a little more. As you can see from the tree branches it was raining and the light wasn't too good at all so zooming in might result in a rather grainy shot. In the end it didn't turn out too badly.

With that she decided enough was enough, if we hadn't got any decent photographs by now we never would have, and off she went. I must admit she did have a very comfortable air about her as she perched in our crab apple tree. I don’t think it’s the first time she’s found a meal in our garden.

Shortly after this episode we suddenly thought about our one legged blackbird “Hoppy”. Had he become an easy meal? The answer was no as a few minutes later he appeared on our bird table and happily began tucking into buggy nibbles.

Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett