Well I'm back from another weekend of traveling with good news and bad news. This trip was mainly to visit family but inevitably I was still in the constant birding mode that I always am in!
A trip to a small castle yielded a few Long-tailed Tits - a lifer for me and a good reminder that it is worth it to check every flock of Tits even if you're 99% sure it's 'only' going to be Blue Tits and Great Tits...
You can never see enough Tits anyway... right?
And we did come across some Egyptian Geese along the trip. For some reason I'm reluctant to count them even thought it's just as legitimate as counting House Sparrows and Starlings in NAmerica...
That's the good news. I'm afraid the bad news is worse... well I guess the bad news is always worse than the good news... but I think you know what I mean...
It was quite late when I was packing my bag to go the airport on Friday so I stuffed all my things in my bag without much care. After arriving to the airport with less than 30 minutes until lift off I was getting pretty stressed and rushed the usual procedure with handing in my bags ... etc
I had my suspicions that I would regret rushing so much and when I finally pulled my camera out of my bag on Saturday afternoon (to get a record shot of the Long-tailed Tits) I almost half expected what would happen.
First thing I noticed was that my camera wasn't detecting the Aperture from the lens and I couldn't change it. Next I noticed that the Autofocus wasn't working and later in the day after looking at it a bit more closely I saw that part of the glass is very bent!
To be honest, I wasn't very annoyed. I once read a book that taught me not to worry about the objects in life. If something breaks that's all you can do. No point grinding my teeth over it!
Here's a terrible photo of the Long-tailed Tit that I managed anyway:
Sooooo.... that means no more bird photography from me. Which of course isn't good. But... on the optimistic side, I've been strongly considering making the switch to digiscoping lately. So maybe this will be a good push in that direction. We'll see though - no promises yet.
The castle:
I'm still considering getting it repaired but I fear the bill that will be associated with it will be more than 50% of what I paid for the lens (I bought it second hand for a very good price from someone who was desperate for money during the recession .... I'm evil)
Another option is to adorn the blog with Flickr photos that people have permitted open access to. But I feel as though that would be demeaning for myself!
Some sweet photos from the new BBC Frozen Planet series here. Check out the photo of what might be Petrels at 1:02! Awesome :)
