It had been a wet gloomy day. But the rain had stopped in the late afternoon, so I headed up to a local park to photograph the Tawny Frogmouths. I had last visited them on 7 December 2021.
I soon found them, but they were perched in a Casuarina in a dark section of the park. Like before they were not too high. But I could only spot two birds – a parent and a single chick.
I was after photos of them flying, so I waited to see what would happen. I arrived a little after 7 pm, and watched them quietly. At 7:26 pm the parent all of a sudden and very quietly took off and flew to perch in a nearby tree.
The chick was now awake.
It seemed to be biting a nearby fruit.
It started some wing stretches.
But then moved along the branch and climbed up to a higher spot.
More wing stretches.
At 7:46 pm it too off.
It only flew a few metres to a nearby tree. The parent then flew over and landed nearby.
The parent then flew to another tree not far away. The chick then flew towards it. This was at 7:49 pm.
It was interesting to watch. The parent was by moving short distance, encouraging the chick to make some short flights.
The parent flew off again, and soon after the chick followed it.
Then again.
It was now getting quite dark, but I suddenly noticed there were two chicks. The second one was perhaps perched in that tree. The parent then flew down to the ground at the base of tree. Perhaps it had found some prey?
It was now about 8:10 pm and getting too dark for available light photography. It had been an interesting evening.
For most of the photos I was using a 135 mm f 1.8 lens at f1.8. For the flight shots I used a shutter speed of 1/1600 sec at 32,000 ISO.