A Fresh Start

This weekend saw the RSPB’s annual Great Garden Birdwatch.

All this entailed was observing the birds in your garden for an hour, making a note of the largest number of any one species seen at any one time (so that a blue tit returning 10 times didn’t count as 10 blue tits, for example) and then submitting your measurements.

My measurements wouldn’t take long to submit. I saw a blackbird. One solitary bloody bird in a whole hour of watching. Maybe I should have put some food out before I started.

That was yesterday, though. This morning I was feeling a lot better and the sky was pure blue. “Let’s go to Titchwell“, I said to Misty. She wasn’t too keen on the idea so I left her to her own devices around the grounds (with hindsight, her presence may have contributed to the low volume of birds in my GGB) and set off for the north Norfolk coast.

Approaching Titchwell (just after spotting a barn owl, out and about surprisingly late in the day) I saw A Photogenic Scene. Excellent - time to test the wide angle lens. Below then are the before and after photos taken from the camera with and then without the lens.

Makes quite a difference, doesn’t it?

A couple of hundred yards later and I was turning into the reserve’s car park. Making my way to the shop - I’d resolved to join up, if only to get the £4.00 car park fee refunded - I met an overly tame robin. I say “overly tame” because the little bugger was coming so close to me I was having difficulty focussing the camera on him!

He soon realised I wasn’t packing any mealworms, though, and fluttered off to beg from other visitors. £27 lighter in the wallet later (albeit with a bag of magazines, pamphlets and two free books to the good) and I was setting off across the reserve to see what there was to be seen. My word it was a busy place - considering how cold it was today there were a surprising number of visitors.

I spotted a curlew (I know it’s a poor photo but he wouldn’t come any closer - this is cropped from a shot taken at maximum 12x zoom) but the birds were generally staying out of camera range, dangnabbit. I saw one man there with a suitable camera - I swear his telephoto lens must have been at least 36″ long! Not too handy for day to day photography, I’ll grant you, but perfect for snapping the birdies.

By now it was getting far too chilly for my liking, even with my woolly hat and two jackets on, so I turned for the “feeding station” in time for a low level fly past of millions⁽¹⁾ of geese:

At the eaterie I selected a hot stilton and mushroom baguette. A very … interesting … choice of fillings. While I’m not 100% convinced I’d choose it again, I’m glad I tried it. And that I wasn’t in company when I did so. After one last snap at the feeders (and while I’m fairly sure the bird on the left is a greenfinch but would happily be corrected if it’s a siskin) I headed for home, arriving just as the Lemsip wore off.