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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

What did you see in your binoculars today? (2 Viewers)

Four Wood Ducks, three male. They're seldom enough seen that those colors come as a surprise all over again. (UVHD+ 10x32)
 
Yesterday morning on the mountain above my house in addition to common species ( alpine accentor, Raven, tree pipit, coal tit, wheatear, rock bunting....) I saw a male rock thrush in display. Great! Verano bga 8x32. And this day i saw the First hobby 2022.( Swaro El 10x42)
 
Off to look up Marsh Sandpiper.

ETA: Wow! “Nice catch” really doesn’t seem to do this one justice.
 
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Just an hour of observation in the Danube delta from Romania (Jurilovca region) and I saw so many birds: red-crested pochard, marsh harrier, red footed falcon, great egret and many: white storks, white pelicans, pochards, graylag gooses, kestrels.
I no longer count: seagulls, cormorants, coots, cranes, swans because there were so many everywhere. And many snakes (dice snakes, smooth snake...)
The most beautiful image was of a pelican with its wings open to the light of the sunset. It had become incandescent with extraordinarily warm colors in my Nikon HG 8X30
 
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An absolutely cracking Wood Warbler in the New Forest doing the full song and wind shivering, didn't think I'd see another one here given how they've virtually become extinct here in the past few years.
 
I saw two young eagle owls and their mother yesterday when the chicks were ringed.

I was scanning an abandoned quarry when an owl conservationist approached me and we had a chat about the return of the eagle owl to the Eifel (Germany). He asked me if I wanted to watch him ring the two chicks, which I took up happily. It was rather exciting to see the mother owl flee from her breeding site in a rock wall leaving behind her two chicks. The man ringed the chicks and told me later they had a buzzard in their fridge...😄 I 'adopted' one of them today, donated 100€ for conservational purposes and gave him the name "Columbo". Look at him! NO2_7864 1.jpg
 
I like a Raptor! Today flied over my home a lot of buzzard, a male of honey buzzard, a sparrowhawk and a hobby. Opticron Verano 8x32
 
About 45 or so starlings (common) mostly young, all pecking at our lawn. Dog scared them off to land on trees at the end of the garden, they all came back, have been pecking for more than an hour. Herring gulls feeding on a neighbour's morning bread offering also caused them to scatter.
Must be very few insects remaining as they've mostly gone back to the trees.
Adult starlings are bonny birds seen close up.
 
From our garden mid afternoon, blue sky and occasional cumulous clouds, watching a pair of swifts high up feeding, when 'behind' them far higher, another speck of a bird was caught in my 12x42, circling slowly without effort.
The lone bird was so high I could only guess it was a gull soaring upwards on the thermals. I've never seen raptors hunt from such a height, and this must be the highest flying bird I've ever spotted.
Luckily after a few minutes of circling it came slightly closer and was probably a herring (or lesser black backed) gull, before it seemed to be suddenly swept away.
Can gulls really see potential food at such great height or will it have been having a snooze?
 
A couple of days ago at the Louvre Museum in Paris, got a most exciting visit with my 6.5x21 Papilio, which are terrific museum binoculars.
Vermeer, Hieroglyphics*, Greek statuary, a new world of detail and hidden beauty.

*Talking about birds, if you haven't already done it, go and check the amazing importance of birds in Ancient Egypt mythology (and the many birds in hieroglyphics, drawn to a perfectly recognisable level of detail, be it an ibis, a hoopoe or a vulture. Speaking of vultures, I was amazed to learn that the vulture is a symbol of the mother, its name "mwt" was the word to say mother, and the bird was a mother deity of utmost importance.


All pictures taken with a smartphone handheld against the Papilio eyecup.
 

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Two pairs of American Robins have been around our yard constantly this spring, surely from the flock of 50+ who ate all(!) the berries on the mountain ash one frigid morning in early February. Seen today from the kitchen window while making lunch: two birds on the ground, one a spotted juvenile. The adult was having an easy time finding big fat worms where I had watered, but kept plucking at them repeatedly... surely that was meant to demonstrate what to do, but the youngster was having none of it, and just stood there with mouth agape waiting to have one end of a worm put in, as it eventually got. Still some way to go there; several chicks would be so much work, it's hard to believe they may do it twice. (10x32 HD+)
 

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