This was stressful. It was stressful at the time because I finished work late on a day when the sea was extremely busy with locally rare birds in parts of Devon. It was stressful again today when a memory card problem has meant that I've lost ALL of the semi-decent pics of this bird, as well as of a stonking adult YLG at point blank from Saturday evening, landed, preening, in flight, the lot. Non-retrievable unless I cough up hundreds of £££, and even then it's only a chance (Sony is very destructive with files, in a way unlike any other camera manufacturer). Absolutely gutted.
2 pics, as fortunately I ran out of space on the first card, and those few images were safe. I had much, much better though, including action shots of it getting harassed by gulls, and of it sat on the sea. I need something rarer ASAP to make me feel better...
Thanks and congrats to Steve for finding the Great Shearwater!
Other recent finds from me which I'll cover in a post when poss:
Sept 10th - Pectoral Sandpiper on BHM
Sept 17th - YLG from Tower Hide, 11+ Ruff on BHM a big increase for that evening
Sept 23rd - YLG (adult, only my 2nd) from Tower Hide
Sept 24th - YLG from Tower Hide
General - we've had 1 to 2 Little Stints and a Curlew Sand around for a while now.
I feel your pain, Tim. What rotten luck!! But I'm glad a couple of GS shots survived, because they depict a different bird to the one I saw at West Bay in the morning. That one didn't have all those gaps in the secondaries.
ReplyDeleteYes good to know that they were different birds! Thankfully the annoyance level about the card has diminished a bit now; this week with aurora and a nice gull has gone a long way to make me feel better.
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