My dentist gave me a cancellation appointment this morning, so I went into Stratford to have my tooth re-filled, and then met up with R, who was also in town. We were both feeling a bit fed up, and food always helps – especially as I was now able to eat again without wincing – so we ended up having lunch in BTP, which was very enjoyable. Yet another member of staff (the third, now, I think) spotted the camera gear on the table and paused in passing to ask me about being a wildlife photographer. This always triggers a mild case of impostor syndrome, but I was happy to give her the same advice I always do in this situation: don’t wait till you’re old like me, but get on with it while you’re young. I just wish I’d been around forty years ago to give myself the same piece of advice – no, wait – that doesn’t work… but you know what I mean.
After lunch I still had almost an hour on my parking, so I yomped down to the river in search of interesting birds, of which there were none, and then out along the south side of the river to Lucy’s Mill, where I was thrilled skinny (in my dreams) to spot two male Migrant Hawkers, bickering over one of the reed beds. It’s been so windy, cold and dank for the past few days that I’d been pretty sure they’d all have succumbed to the autumnal weather, so it was a genuine pleasure to see some still hanging on. Conditions weren’t especially good for photographing them, and they mostly kept their distance, but I’m not unhappy with this image.
The only other possible contender for today’s photo of the day is the single shot I managed of a Goldcrest in Holy Trinity churchyard, before the near-constant deafening din of the repair work that’s currently underway on the outside wall of the nave drove me out of there. A lot of birds flew out of the area each time the frantic drilling started up, and I felt sorry for the ones, like this Goldcrest, that have to work so constantly to find enough food to keep themselves going that relocation is out of the question. Under other circumstances I’d have been far more focused on the deficiencies of this image than its virtues, but today I felt it was worth celebrating the fact that this tiny bird was managing to maintain its ferocious concentration and hunt out prey, despite being in the middle of what sounded like a war zone.
