Nice blue tit!
And that Mallard drake is beautiful, ducks are my favourite birds.
And is that a… goshawk? (auto correct wants to make that “gosh award”, lol)
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Yeah, there where some hunters with a ferret and two goshawks looking for rabbits in the park. They are doing this regularly to keep the population in check. I talked to them and send them the pictures.
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Really cool, you can see the ‘jesses’ on the legs of the goshawk
I was very interested in falconry growing up, so that’s really interesting for me
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Phew, glad you guys got in first, I very nearly said Peregrine Falcon - they have very similar markings, but now on second look the cere (bit around the nostrils) is more yellow on the falcon and the head is a different shape (less pointy).
We have a lot of raptors and birds of prey in our neck of the woods that we regularly see. Ranging in size from Nankeen Kestrels up to Australia’s two biggest: Wedge Tailed Eagles and Powerful Owls.
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Another shot. This time a Eurasian Coot
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Great shot!
Fun fact for the non-Germans: we call it ‘Blässhuhn’, which means something like ‘pale chicken’, because of the white face. About the ‘chicken’ part, well… it isn’t related to chickens, the truth is, when names were given to the animals, the people often just picked a common, somewhat similar looking animal as the base name and attached some word part to it.
So we ended up with the above Blässhuhn, or the Thermometerhuhn (that last one is an Australian bird, and at least it is somewhat related to chickens). Same with non-birds. A capybara is called Wasserschwein (water pig), a turtle is Schildkröte (shield toad), and a porcupine is Stachelschwein (spike pig).
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I keep mixing up the goshawk and the sparrowhawk.
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Up before the sun again.
If I still lived in the Midwest 41 degrees Fahrenheit would be understandable at this time of year but in Southern California it is freaking ridiculous. 
Wheels
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Finishing up on another backyard. This one isn’t done yet, I will be building a bikeshed over where the low orange brickwork is and repair the bin covers.
The brickwork in the foreground used to be regular square pavers. Very neat, but boring. This looks more lively and it’s almost intended for weeds to spring up between the bricks. Client is very happy, and she better be because this stuff is expensive, lots of man-hours go into hauling the stuff, selecting them, laying them just-so, etc.
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Lol, my German ancestry is fine with neat and boring.
Wheels
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Local nature reserve ‘Bislicher Insel’
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We spent 4 days at my brother’s small farm in north Georgia. The last day we had blocked for drone flying and truck porn. Brother has the LR4, me the Lexus GX (Land Cruiser Prado). No horses or goats were harmed in the making of our bad videos.
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Gorgeous spread. But all I am seeing is the round yard & arena, and wondering how many horses and what breed?
Thanks HB. They only have 2 horses at the moment for husband and wife, since the kids are too busy with school and athletics. Horse breed is way outside of my wheelhouse, LOL. Any guesses?
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Nice looking horses. Pinto and what looks like a Buckskin… Hmmm, could be Quarter Horses, but a bit hard to tell from this angle (and I am no expert - I once seriously upset a young lady at a show when I said “nice stock horse”. “She’s a thoroughbred” was the snooty reply 
)
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Nature reseve “Bislicher Insel”
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For real. I had a taste of it as PPL holder, but haven’t done it for real again since 2006.
I encourage you to click the image and zoom in.
Love that new tele zoom.
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Epic.
How far was that bird away when you took that picture?
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