Kestrel diving at Saul Warth, near Frampton church

I’ve noticed the reported sightings of large number of curlews on the mud flats of the Severn Estuary just north of WWT Slimbridge. We have a good website, The Gloster Birder, that lists daily reports of the unusual birds being observed by contributors to the site in the county.

As the weather was sunny and the high tide in the Severn Estuary would be in the early afternoon I drove to Frampton-on-Severn and followed a footpath down to the banks of the river where the Severn Way was forced to go inland to avoid a nature reserve where wildlife and particularly birds were protected.

When I reached the shore i found the sea water was stil far away across the very wide mud and sandbanks which are only covered at high tide. In the distance I could just see birds feeding on the mud and curlews were identifiable by their long beaks. Unfortunately my lens’ reach wasn’t good enough for good pictures over that distance. The tide was also slower in coming in than I’d thought, so I concentrated on the kestrels that were hunting over the meadows and trees and the banks of the Severn.

I identified at least six kestrels patrolling a mile long stretch of their ‘territory’. At one point I switched off my lens’ auto focus reach to stop it hunting over anything within 3 metres of the lens. I carried on taking pictures in the near and middle distance, some over the nature reserve, whilst also occasional overriding the auto focus with manual control.

I was aware that I couldn’t get sharp pictures sometimes and was slightly perplexed. I took several pictures of a kestrel hovering and then steeply diving into the undergrowth in the middle distance. Before too long I decided to check the lens was working properly and when i looked at the manual switches on the lens I realised that earlier I’d turned off the autofocus rather then the distance control. No wonder I couldn’t get good results.

In the end I found some of the mistakes had produced quite interesting results, so I’m blipping a couple of these as well as a closer shot of a hovering kestrel when everything was finally working properly!

In the background is Frampton-on-Severn church next to the Sharpness canal with the ridge of the west facing Cotswold escarpment on the horizon.