The long delay between posts here is not due to slackness necessarily, but rather to the quiet woodlands around us at the moment.  (Oh, and a bit of slackness of my part!)

So skip ahead to today. The Weather man promised some delightful looking sunshine and no real wind.  A clear morning both weather and diary, so we made a quick decision to go for an early morning look-see at the Treatment Plant.

For those that know the area, early morning is both a good and bad thing.  As you enter the plant, you drive straight into the rising sun.  Nothing to see, and hard on both driver and attitude. And we didn’t see anything, except this big yellow blob hanging in the mist on the horizon.  Brilliant.

The point of all this is as we were rounding the road that skirts along the Little River, I noted a streak heading across the reed beds on the far side of the river.    Only one thing it could be.  An Australian Hobby.  Used to be called an Australian Falcon, (a much more descriptive name).  I think this is the most beautifully marked of our raptors and its falcon like thin wings with the ripple pattern is a treat to see.  In flight the speed is awesome.   Easy to mis read as a Peregrine I think.

Sure enough that brown streak zipped up over the reeds and I started to get focus on the bird.  Using the new AF 350II Focus deal on the D810, it just ripped into spot on focus and held like a fox terrier.  The 300mm AF was chattering away trying to keep up.  And for the most part the focus held.

Even against the reed beds, where most of my cameras would have gone. These focus elves seem very professional.

On looking at the images, and the bird was indeed too far away for great detail, it looks like this one has ‘rings’ on each leg.  So someone has marked the bird.

It made at least 5 passes through the reeds,  and even though I was a long way away it was still pretty impressive to see the bird come out of the reeds, climb, stoop and then barrel through the reed beds time after time. You have to be impressed with the speed.

Rather than go on here, the images sort of speak for themselves.  Nice way to spend a morning.