Thawing river and a trick Raptor!

Although the River Gartempe is still well and truly frozen over in parts, especially around Saulge, the relatively mild temperatures have induced some kind of thaw and  it's been good to throw off my second duvet of a night! I walked down by the river yesterday morning and took a few pictures of the river 'defrosting'  - wrong lens with me to be honest but a few came out ok and this one in particular seems to capture the re-emergence of flowing water from the cold ice.

A bit further along the river bank I disturbed  what I thought was a Hen Harrier,which proceeded to ghost across a field (they're always flying away from me!) and then settled on a tree branch some 200 meters away. At that distance any lens is going to be tested and whilst these couple of pics won't win any prizes with the full 500ml zoom, it does reveal that this is in fact not a Hen Harrier at all but a very pale phase Eurasian Buzzard!

Impossible Goshawk!

Scanning the fields above Saulge for a pair of Hen Harriers I'd seen earlier from afar and hoping to at last get some decent photographs of these wonderful birds I came across a falcon flying straight at me. I had to be darn quick and switch from binoculars to camera .... was never set and the focusing was rubbish but fired of a couple of shots anyway.

To my surprise, when I downloaded the pics on to my laptop to have a look I'd somehow captured 2 completely different birds! The 2nd is obviously a Kestrel but the first? No way can I be sure and Sparrowhawks are common around here but could this really be my first Goshawk in France?

Truth is I'll probably never know .... and still no idea how I managed to snap 2 raptors in the space of 10 seconds, maybe one was chasing the other?!!