Eastleach Martin, 28 August

 Back to birds after the Astro interlude! 

As many were reporting that the Long-tailed Shrike was looking much better now than before, was very confiding (as many shrikes tend to be) and that it might depart any day now, I thought it was time for another visit. My previous two trips there hadn't been brilliant, so I was hoping for something better this time, although at least on my second visit the bird was in Oxfordshire.

Arriving mid afternoon, I hoped that the morning "rush" had dissipated, leaving few people around the bird. This worked well, and there were only handful present by then. On arrival, the bird was said to be in the large bush only about 50m from the road, but almost immediately it flew past me into the low hedge that runs parallel with the road, to the north of the footpath. Here it remained for quite some time, being inactive for prolonged periods. It preferred low down in the lee of the hedge, presumably to avoid the stiff breeze. 

Photographically this wasn't ideal as there were often annoying twigs and leaves in front of the bird, and always close behind. However there was one spot where it stayed for some time where I could get largely unobstructed close views - see photo below.

Long-tailed Shrike © Stephen Burch

At one point, a cry of ring-tailed harrier went up, and turning round to face east into Oxon, I got the record shot below that Lew has confirmed is a juv Hen Harrier. I also caught a glimpse of another harrier sp. when emerging from the car park just after arrival which was said to be a Montys. But I couldn't confirm this on the views I had and with no photos. 

Juvenile Hen Harrier looking away record shot © Stephen Burch

Just before the end of this visit, the shrike decided to return to its favoured hedge and briefly popped up onto a twig which resulted a clear view of it, with an uncluttered background - see below. After that bonus I decided to leave what must be the most photographed shrike in the world by now!

Long-tailed Shrike © Stephen Burch

More Astro from the Downs - fisheye Milky Way and Perseid Meteors

After my first post on astro photography with a tracking mount,  here is another one on my next attempt at wide-angle images. This took place after the solar eclipse on 12 August, which, as some as you probably know, was coincidently the maximum of the annual Perseid meteor shower.

For this session, I thought it would be interesting to try for two objectives. First was the summer Milky Way right across the sky with my new Laowa 8-15mm fisheye lens. The second was to use my 16mm wide-angle lens to try to capture some Perseid meteors and to hopefully show some diverging from their radiant point. 

There is only one spot on the Downs that I know of that is accessible by car and is suitable for fisheye imaging. So there is where I setup for taking shots from about 23:00 as astronomical twilight ended and the night officially started. I again used the astro-modified Canon RP, but this time with the fisheye lens set on 8mm, to give a circle showing the full 180 degree sky. This I mounted on the iOptron Sky Guider Pro tracking mount, so I could take 2min exposures for about 1hour (i.e. 30 "subs" in total).  The main limitation here is the light pollution which is worst to the north and east, better to the south. 

After stacking and background removals etc, I ended up with the image below. I've suppressed as best I can the light pollution around the edges. The astro-modified Canon RP has again produced some nice detail and colour in sections of the Milky Way. The Lagoon nebula, M8, can even just be seen as a tiny red spot very close to the southern horizon (about 8 o'clock on the image below).

Milky Way image obtained using a 180 degree fisheye lens © Stephen Burch

In parallel with the fisheye imaging for the Milky Way, I setup  my 16mm WA lens attached to my "birding" R5 on a static tripod (no tracking). This limited me to 8 sec exposures which I took at 10 sec intervals. I just left this snapping away, stopping every so often to change the camera’s view to approximately follow the radiant point, as it rose in the sky from its starting point low in the light polluted north east sky.  After the better part of 3 hours, I had accumulated almost 1000 shots! Even the ones with the highest radiant point were significantly degraded by light pollution. 

By looking through the collection of all c.1000 shots, I eventually managed to spot about 20 meteors, i.e. about one every 50 shots or 1 every 6.7 mins! I may well have missed a few as its not easy to spot the occasional meteor in an image full of stars and often many aeroplane and satellite trails! 

Below is a composite image showing all the detected meteors superimposed (and aligned) on top of a stacked image of the Milky Way and stars. I was surprised how colourful all the Perseid meteors were, with green at the start of each trail which turned to red towards the end. The odd sporadic meteor (see short trail near the top of the image, in the left side of the Milky Way) did not show such colour. 

The image below also clearly shows the divergence of the meteors from the radiant position which was below Cassiopeia (although it is impossible to discern that constellation in the image below).

Also visible in the Andromeda Galaxy, M31 - the angled elliptical "fuzzy blob" to the right of the Milky Way near the centre of the image. 

So quite a late night but well worthwhile! 

Composite image showing 20+ Perseid meteors superimposed on a stacked image of the Milky Way taken from the same sequence of photos.
Better viewed large on a black background by clicking on the image.
© Stephen Burch

Milky Way from the Downs, 7-8 August

Now for something different from birds and dragonflies! 

Judging by the recent discussions amongst local birders about comets and other celestial events (e.g. aurora), I thought this post might be of interest.

It has taken me sometime to get to grips with some new gear for astrophotography, but last week I finally managed to get a sequence of Milky Way shots from a location on the Downs that, after a fair amount of processing, formed a presentable final image (see below).

This image was obtained using an astro-modified Canon RP, a 16mm wide angle lens, mounted on an iOptron Sky Guider Pro tracking mount. Note I didn't use any light pollution filters. This location appears reasonably dark by local standards. 

I took around 20 shots, each with a 2 min exposure time. In addition, I took a similar number of "darks" with the lens cap on, for calibration purposes. 

This time of year is good for Milky Way photography, as the brightest section is on display in the south, with the galactic core just above the horizon at our latitudes. The distinctive small red fuzzy blob just above the horizon is M8, the Lagoon Nebula. 

Now I've got a worthwhile result I intend to try out some different lenses on a variety of astro subjects!

Milky Way above the Downs © Stephen Burch

Central Spain again for GOSHAWKS etc! February 2026

In May last year I had a great week at Hides Calera in central Spain, which is a drive of about one and a half hours from Madrid airport. This whet my appetite for more and so I returned in February this year. For this visit, my top priorities comprised adult Goshawk at Hides Calera and Golden Eagle, at a new place - Hides Villuercas which is based at Canamero, a small town a further two hours drive away from Madrid.

In addition, many of the other raptors (Spanish Imperial Eagle, Griffon Vulture and Marsh Harrier) from last year were around, although in winter numerous Red Kites replace the Black Kites that migrate to Africa out of the breeding season. 

My first couple of days were disrupted by bad weather but I did have two excellent Goshawk sessions and a bonus in the form of a hide that had up to 7 Hawfinches coming in at close range, in addition to plentiful Azure-winged Magpies. At Hides Villuercas I did less well as the Golden Eagle had stopped coming in and I also had a blank session at a Vulture Hide. However I did have great views of a Bonelli's Eagle together with smaller birds including Blue Rock Thrush and Black Redstart.

Here is a small selection of the almost 40,000 images I took. For more photos and details of the trip, go to this page on my website. For my gallery of all processed photos to date, go to this page.

Adult Goshawk incoming in heavy rain!  © Stephen Burch

Goshawk in heavy rain  © Stephen Burch

Red Kite in steep dive  © Stephen Burch

Hawfinch in flight © Stephen Burch

Bonelli's Eagle in flight © Stephen Burch

Mega aurora display - 19 January 2026

At last, after months of frustration since a brief showing of a weak display back in April 2025, I had a brief opportunity to capture some more aurora images, to add to my sparse collection. 

Why is it that whenever there is aurora activity, nearly always it either in the early hours, cloudy in southern Oxfordshire or is too weak or short-lived to be of great interest?! 

This time however the activity was strong for two successive nights but even then clouds ruled out any views, apart from a brief window of just over an hour from about 22:15 on the 19th January. It had been raining until just before then, so I was very surprised to find clear skies outside the back door when I popped out again for a quick check! 

So I rapidly setup in the garden to see what was showing. This time I wasn't disappointed and there was a very strong display underway, completely filling the field of view of my 16mm lens on my full frame Canon R5! It was bright enough to clearly showing on live view, which is most unusual. 

I gave it about 20mins here, taking 8 second exposures at 10 second intervals using the camera's internal intervalometer. From these shots I was able to generate a short timelapse video. A still is shown below. 

Aurora as seen from the garden.
Click here to see a timelapse video on YouTube

Keen to get a less obstructed view, I then headed out a short distance to a reasonably dark location at the foot of the downs, that has a good northern horizon. But by the time I got there the aurora had badly weakened and the clouds were making a comeback. Nevertheless I persisted here hoping that I could dig something out of the less than impressive images I was capturing. After about half an hour the cloud cover had returned to almost 100% and it was time to go home. 

Aurora as seen from the foot of the downs.
Click here to see a timelapse video on YouTube

This was the strongest display I have seen since the famous G5 geomagnetic storm on 10 May 2024, which was (for me) most unusually (a) visible from nightfall and (b) un-interrupted by cloud.