What birds (are you/have you been) watching? What birds have been watching you?

[Bryn]

. . . Thanks Richard, that's what I remember! Thanks to everyone else for checking too. Some great pictures, what a talented lot you are.
Many years ago, at a holiday cottage on North Uist near Balranald reserve, I managed to get a photo of a young corncrake! Unfortunately we only ever took slides (transparencies) and I've no idea if it's possible to transfer it to other media.

https://wiki.ezvid.com/best-slide-scanners

[LezLee]

https://wiki.ezvid.com/best-slide-scanners

Thank you so much! I've got lots of negatives too and a few films. I've still got my projector and screen but I want to move on now!
Thanks again.

[greenilex]

Lots of apples still on the neighbour’s tree and I have been enjoying the blackbirds squabbling over them...we have some fat blackbirds and squirrels round here.

[Maclintick]

Thanks to Odders for partridge monograph. We were in N. Yorks before Yuletide, where an adjacent field was home to a hare & covey of red-legged partridges, seemingly relishing each others company to the extent that the hare remained unperturbed by the partridge family's incessant faffing-about, until their antics set off a hare-trigger, whereupon he (or she) would leap & scatter the avian neighbours -- temporarily, of course, until they re-grouped and initiated an identical routine.

Enjoyed RT's spectacular goshawk shots & Ardcarp's of Brixham Loonie. Recent delights hereabouts have been the starling murmurations at Otmoor, augmented by a prodigious turnout of golden plovers and lapwings..sensational. Oh, and a close-up sighting of a female hen-harrier.

[Dave2002]

https://wiki.ezvid.com/best-slide-scanners

Any idea which of these are really any good?

I have a cheap scanner, but it's not really ultra high quality. It does do fast scans, but the quality is a bit miserable.
I think a good scanner should be able to get pretty good quality from slides, though might take a long while to scan.
If I thought £100 would get me something a lot better, I'd probably go for it, but the number one in that list is over £1.5k.

[Bryn]

Any idea which of these are really any good?

I have a cheap scanner, but it's not really ultra high quality. It does do fast scans, but the quality is a bit miserable.
I think a good scanner should be able to get pretty good quality from slides, though might take a long while to scan.
If I thought £100 would get me something a lot better, I'd probably go for it, but the number one in that list is over £1.5k.

Sorry, I have thought about getting one but have ended up thinking it no use getting a bargain option, yet not feeling able to justify a high-resolution model. I may end up with a camera add-on.

[ardcarp]

Mrs A and I visited Seaton Marshes (East Devon) today. It was a beautiful afternoon, and low tide. There were hundreds of lapwing sitting around facing the breeze (someone said around 2000), more redshanks than I've ever seen in one place and plenty of curlews. Little grebes were busy diving, and shelduck spent more time with their bottoms in the air than their heads. The noticeboard said that a grey phalarope had been spotted there on 12th Jan.

[oddoneout]

There is much more activity and song now which does much to distract from less pleasant matters. The partridges appeared again on Monday, this time in the garden on the other side of mine, although there was again a loner grazing on my lawn. Something spooked them and they decided to take off, but instead of heading for open space down the length of the garden they launched up and over the 5' fence to the side. It made for a rather disconcerting few seconds because unlike peasants they don't announce their take off and due to the standing start they had to adopt(the gardens are very narrow) they only just cleared the fence - which I was standing on the other side of. Having a blackbird lifting my hair as it cannons past engaged in a scrap with another is one thing, but partridges are solid birds and there were six of them...Contact was avoided, but by a much closer margin than either party would have wished.

[ardcarp]

unlike peasants

[BBMmk2]

A Facebook friend of mine put up a marvellous photo of a harpy eagle yesterday. What a big raptor that is! I don’t know whether anyone can upload a photo of one at all?

[Richard Tarleton]

A Facebook friend of mine put up a marvellous photo of a harpy eagle yesterday. What a big raptor that is! I don’t know whether anyone can upload a photo of one at all?

Loads of pictures in the internet, BBM. Try here. Had your friend actually seen one ?

[oddoneout]

unlike peasants

Oops! That was a combination of tiredness and a family saying. One of the children when very small came up with 'peasants and phartridges', and since both birds are a regular part of life here it did rather stick.

[Vox Humana]

A Facebook friend of mine put up a marvellous photo of a harpy eagle yesterday. What a big raptor that is! I don’t know whether anyone can upload a photo of one at all?

The raptor I would really have loved to see (from safe inside a car) is the massive Haast Eagle of New Zealand, which had a wingspan of around 9 ft. It became extinct around 600 years ago, about the same time that the Maoris exterminated one of its main prey species, the massive, flightless Moas that could weigh up to 36 stone. I did see a reconstruction of one in the museum in Wellington a couple of years ago. It was a bit disappointing TBH, but I'm sure a live one was quite a different matter.

[Richard Tarleton]

The raptor I would really have loved to see (from safe inside a car) is the massive Haast Eagle of New Zealand, which had a wingspan of around 9 ft. It became extinct around 600 years ago, about the same time that the Maoris exterminated one of its main prey species, the massive, flightless Moas that could weigh up to 36 stone. I did see a reconstruction of one in the museum in Wellington a couple of years ago. It was a bit disappointing TBH, but I'm sure a live one was quite a different matter.

All the same, wingspan sounds approx the same as a lammergeier? But presumably much broader wings and more massively built?

[Vox Humana]

All the same, wingspan sounds approx the same as a lammergeier? But presumably much broader wings and more massively built?

Yes, I think so. Some males are thought possibly to have had a wing span of as much as 3 metres. Being a forest species, its wings were shorter relative to body weight than, say White-tailed Eagle. Same is true of Harpy, of course. I don't think a Harpy would take a grown human though. Haast Eagle certainly could have done if it could take Moas - though it doesn't necessarily follow that it carried them off whole.