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

Close encounters......... (1 Viewer)

Had a Golden Eagle about 30 feet above us on Bealach na Baa. Amazing sight. A little higher but on Mull a White Tailed Sea Eagle flew over us. Low enough to hear the “whooshing” of its wings.

The Pembs Grackle was hardly shy and the Little Bunting at Forest Farm was down to a few feet.
 
ClarkWGriswold said:
Thinking about it, a Dotterel on the top of Cairngorm was amazingly confiding as well.
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They often are, though I encountered a male with a chick up there and it wasn't having any of it, so I immediately decided not to push it and went elsewhere.

On Scilly though, I walked up to a juvenile with the usual crowd of first-time sub-200 birding aspirants screaming "you'll flush it", sat down and began sketching it. Fifteen minutes in with the bird still posing a few feet from me an American walked up and asked if he could photograph me with the Dotterel for an article he was writing on Scilly birding for some American birding magazine. I said yes but don't know if anything was ever published.

John
 
Farnboro John said:
On Scilly though, I walked up to a juvenile with the usual crowd of first-time sub-200 birding aspirants screaming "you'll flush it", sat down and began sketching it. Fifteen minutes in with the bird still posing a few feet from me an American walked up
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Would it have been OK for all the "sub-200 birding aspirants" to have done the same, then?
 
JTweedie said:
Not rare per se, but not common either, but I was astounded at having two Golden Eagles fly about 10-20 metres directly above my head in northern Spain last year. I don't think I'd ever be lucky enough to get a close encounter like this here in Scotland.

And the thing is, with lots of Red Kites, Griffon Vultures and Ravens in the sky at the same time, for the Spanish observers this wouldn't have been a remarkable sighting. But I just think back and think wow, they were REALLY that close - Golden Eagles!
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Indeed, a very difficult species to get anywhere near to.
 
Patudo said:
Would it have been OK for all the "sub-200 birding aspirants" to have done the same, then?
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At least he wasn't carrying a great big Telephoto lens ;)

Jesus Christ, John...on the Shaming Birders thread you've been slagging off photographers for getting too close.
 
Warixenjalka said:
At June 2022 I started my day early (as usually in my job). It was my second target of the morning that I was going to. I stepped out of the forest to logging square 05:06 AM and noticed a large figure in the top of one of the broken trees - Golden Eagle! I had never before seen an GE sitting still, but always in the high, blue sky, and this one was sitting calmly with preening only about 50 meters away from me. I had a sun behind my back so it didn't noticed me before some time - maybe ten minutes later - I coughed. Then this magnificent subadult bird flew away. Photos are taken for my cell phone.
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Didn’t realise you were so tall Wari….if the first image was anything to go by.🤣
 
Weasel1 said:
At least he wasn't carrying a great big Telephoto lens ;)

Jesus Christ, John...on the Shaming Birders thread you've been slagging off photographers for getting too close.
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What I've actually been advocating is knowing what you are doing. You can only get that by experience and that is best gained by using that of others. I had some very capable mentors when I started birding (and still made mistakes that make me cringe and I'm not telling you lot about!) and newbies should join their local groups and get the benefit of the same thing.

Non-birder photographers are a menace to wildlife. Now that its more or less impossible to make any money by selling photos, among birders it tends to be those who don't have long lenses that push the limits of what ought to be done rather than the professionals but obviously there are exceptions both ways.

Birds are not all equal. Some entire species are habitually confiding: other entire species are habitually not. Some individuals within species will behave differently depending on their life experience or sometimes age (the naive juvenile is a case in point). Birders should always take care to understand the situation before taking any action. The Dotterel on Scilly that I instanced had been present several days and I was well aware of its confiding nature.

If you don't know what you are doing then you must be extra-cautious.

John
 
Not a rarity, but a memorable experience, while driving down Big Cypress National Reserve in Florida, I park on the side of the road just to check out if any birds are in the area and I get out of the car to look at the canal. The moment a close the door, I feel a big shadow go over me and land behind me, turn around and there's this adult Barred Owl looking at me so closely that you can see the reflection of the road, my car and me in his eyes when you zoom in the picture: ML335357671 - Barred Owl - Macaulay Library

What am I supposed to do when the bird is the one that comes to me and just looks at me without a care in the world?

That same morning, I had my lifer Snapping Turtle, so two memorable sightings for uncommon species of South Florida: Common Snapping Turtle (Chelydra serpentina)
 
Farnboro John said:
If you don't know what you are doing then you must be extra-cautious.
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Which it sounds like the crowd watching the dotterel were. Incidentally, how were they to know the bloke walking up to a few feet of the bird "knew what he was doing"? Should those that do wear a shirt that says so, along with a 400, 500 or 600?
 
lgonz1008 said:
What am I supposed to do when the bird is the one that comes to me and just looks at me without a care in the world?
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There's nothing you can do except enjoy the experience.

I had a similar experience with a Shortie, I was getting the camera out of the car and the owl came and landed right next to me, it sat there totally not bothered by my presence and allowed me to grab a few images, we spent nearly an hour together, one of my best experiences ever.

SEO-web-5399-1024.jpg
 
Patudo said:
Which it sounds like the crowd watching the dotterel were. Incidentally, how were they to know the bloke walking up to a few feet of the bird "knew what he was doing"? Should those that do wear a shirt that says so, along with a 400, 500 or 600?
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Well, they could have called a query rather than shouting a remonstration. Then we could have had a conversation.

Edit: I've just remembered a similarly shouty crowd yelling at a bunch of photographers (the old selling photos ones) inching closer to an Isabelline Wheatear on the Gugh to stop, they'd flush it (much of the crowd was already closer than the toggers) and the bird subsequently - NOT as a result of the shouting - flying directly to the photographers and posing a few yards in front of them. Clickety-click-click-click. Birds, eh?

John
 
Farnboro John said:
My abject apologies and considerable congratulations!

Cheers

John
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Yeah thanks, turns out I do know the difference between a Buzzard and a White Tailed Eagle that's 3 times the wingspan and not a common sight round here from this experienced birder. That and the hundreds of other birders that have seen this well documented rarity know their stuff too, as they've not called it into question.
 
One that kind ifgot away. I was spending time scanning for raptors on my local pit tip. I had been stood in roughly the same spot for c90 minutes when suddenly a Jack Snipe got up c10 feet away. The weird thing was the habitat wasn't where you would usually find them, it was pretty dry ground with short tufts of grass.

Another encounter concerns a very common bird. I was using my laptop in the garden when a Blackbird came and landed on top of the screen. The main reason I didn't want to scare it off was I didn't fancy having to clean burd crap from between the keys!
 
When I first got into birding in winter 2021, there was a Little Bunting at Upper College Farm in Bexley. The first day I was there the bird was quite flighty and I had some decent views of it on the floor that day with 4 or 5 other birders. I went back a further 2 times and the bird had been there for maybe 2 weeks, so it was very accustomed to the constant pressure of dog walkers that were there. Needless to say, the 3rd and last time I got to see the bird, I had it to myself for around an hour at about a foot away from me. The bird was not at all bothered by my presence and even when another birder turned up it did not give a damn about him turning up there. It was a lovely experience and is definitely one of the experiences that cemented me into birding and photography. I will try to find the pictures.

Kind regards

Evan
 

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