Sad day for a Collared Dove.

[Ray Shotter]

On Friday 12 October we heard a loud bang on our lounge window. It was a Kestrel who obviously caught a Collard Dove in flight and both landed on our patio with the Dove between the Kestrel's claws. The Dove was pecked to death and the Kestrel was plucking the Dove's feathers before starting his meal. I got my camera and took the image below through the double glazed windows. Had to do some processing to remove the glare caused by the window.



I decided to open the window to obtain a clearer image but the Kestrel flew off leaving its prey on the patio. Later it returned but pulled the corpse into a dark corner of the patio under our Magnolia tree so I tried once again and the image is shown below.

[escallonia]

Re: Sad day for a Collared Dove.

Nature is so cruel! your photo's are a bit large I have to scroll to see all the picture regards John.

[David Morison]

Re: Sad day for a Collared Dove.

Yes the pictures are too large for the screen which results in a little noise and slight softness. They could do with a slight boost in contrast and saturation but really good shots well captured.

By the way, it is unlikely that a Kestrel would tackle a Collared Dove which is as big as itself - this is a female Sparrowhawk, a habitual killer of garden birds but great to see!

Regards

David

[Pops]

Re: Sad day for a Collared Dove.

David beat me to it .. this is the female sparrowhawk.
2 good shots showing nature in the raw.

[Ray Shotter]

Re: Sad day for a Collared Dove.

Nature is so cruel! your photo's are a bit large I have to scroll to see all the picture regards John.

John,

You are quite right - the images are too large. I haven't found the way to upload to the forum satisfactorily yet. Also, I will have to reduce the size of my uploads to my Gallery since theyare clearly too large..

Ray.

[Ray Shotter]

Re: Sad day for a Collared Dove.

Yes the pictures are too large for the screen which results in a little noise and slight softness. They could do with a slight boost in contrast and saturation but really good shots well captured.

By the way, it is unlikely that a Kestrel would tackle a Collared Dove which is as big as itself - this is a female Sparrowhawk, a habitual killer of garden birds but great to see!

Regards

David

David and Pops,

Thanks for the advice and the correction I had forgotten that a Kestrel is a much smaller bird. I am not very well informed about birds despite living in the country for a large part of my life. However, although you both say that our predator is a "Sparrowhawk" - having looked up my book on birds - I wondered whether it might have been a Goshawk despite the fact that it is a much rarer breed of bird. My reason for saying this is the "white streak" above the eye which my book indicates is one of the features which helps to identify whether it is a "Sparrowhawk" or a "Goshawk".

Ray.

[escallonia]

Re: Sad day for a Collared Dove.

Yes it is definitely a Sparrow- hawk the shape of the head determines it from a Goshawk. By the way you have a great camera Leica M9 regards John.

[Pol]

Re: Sad day for a Collared Dove.

John,

You are quite right - the images are too large. I haven't found the way to upload to the forum satisfactorily yet. Also, I will have to reduce the size of my uploads to my Gallery since theyare clearly too large..

Ray.

Ray,

Ian has an explanation of how to use the 'My Pics' option HERE.

I usually use the 'original image' and 'inline' options myself and that will post the original image into the thread in line on the left side of the posting.

ideally, the original image should be no more than approx 850 -900pixels width or 800px depth. Those dimensions usually mean no-one should have to scroll to see the whole picture.

Hope that helps.

BTW - we sometimes lose feral pigeons or collared doves the same way, though we usually find the feathers but haven't ever witnessed it happen, as you did.

Pol

[Ray Shotter]

Re: Sad day for a Collared Dove.

Pol,

Thanks for the information. I had tried both methods given by Ian but still managed to get it wrong. The problem is I shoot in Raw and the full frame images are almost 18Mb so they require a substantial reduction when converting into JPeg before uploading into the Gallery. However, it is not too difficult to do but it means reducing the size of the stored JPeg images on my computer which I intend to upload first - which I will do before uploading in future.

Ray.

[Pops]

Re: Sad day for a Collared Dove.

Ray you only need to resize for the forum. Use a copy for resizing and you can keep the original intact

[Ray Shotter]

Re: Sad day for a Collared Dove.

Pops,

Thanks for the advice. I will get myself organised soon.

Regards.

Ray.

[Ian]

Re: Sad day for a Collared Dove.

Hi Ray - which software do you use for your RAWs? I will do my best to help you to produce ideal images for viewing in your gallery and here on the forum

Ian

[Ray Shotter]

Re: Sad day for a Collared Dove.

Ian,

Thanks for the offer. I process my RAW files in Adobe Lightroom 3.6 and when converting to JPEG I transfer some of them to Adobe Elements 10. When I transfer to Elements I always leave a JPEG version stored in Lightroom but this is usually very large. I haven't dicovered how to reduce the size of a JPEG image in Lightroom yet. I tend to use the JPEG version in Elements to reduce the size. Probably not a very efficient way to deal with the images.

Ray.

[Ray Shotter]

Re: Sad day for a Collared Dove.

Hi Ray - which software do you use for your RAWs? I will do my best to help you to produce ideal images for viewing in your gallery and here on the forum

Ian

Ian,

Still can't find a satisfactory way of reducing image size despite trying to follow Martin Evening's instructions in his "The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 book". Consequently decided to use transfer to Elements 10 again and reduced the dpi from 300 to 200. But it looks as though 150 dpi might be more appropriate if I am to keep the landscape images on the page.



Please accept my apologies to all of you who are taking the trouble to look at my attempts at posting images. I hope to get it right very soon !!

Ray.

[escallonia]

Re: Sad day for a Collared Dove.

Perfect Ray, thanks for posting Regards John.