Thursday 4 August 2011

Local Frustration



Last night on my short trip to the rice paddy the key word was frustration. A daft boy, music blaring from his mobile phone, asked me if I was taking photographs! I mean I am set up with a tripod and camera attached to a telescope so a bit of a no brainer really! He hung a round for a while and the music did for most of the birds.


This was worse than frustrating because there were some very  photogenic Yellow-bellied Prinias darting around. The photograph above is fitting testimony to my frustrations. I just couldn’t get a better focus as the bird was gone. This is part of the wider frustrations every digiscoper feels – it’s not simply point and shoot with the luxury of autofocus! The prinia was in fact too close to be able to get it quickly into the viewfinder. So I was cursing as I fluffed another opportunity for a great shot.

The White-vented Myna hung around and was much more obliging albeit it at a distance but these fellows are truly ten-a-penny.

My consolation was the return of the Barn Owl to the soi, alternatively a first sighting of it for a few months. There he was perched on an overflow pipe abutting from high up on a house, 100 metres from home. It was pitch dark but the owl gave me time to go home and get my bins and have a good look at it with assistance from my car headlamps. Quite a magnificent sight.

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