After this mornings disappointment of thick fog the afternoon session boosted me back up again with perfect conditions of 100% cloud cover on a SW>3 with light rain showers, just the stuff to move the waders.
The south and west shores were deserted whilst the north shore held 9 Teal both in the water and on the shore whereas the east shoreline was a different story altogether with small waders dashing up and down the mud looking like mice through the bins.
Up with the scope and a scan of a small area revealed 6 Ringed Plover, 1 Little Ringed Plover and 5 Dunlin all busily probing the mud. Its times like this when I miss Bertha as trying to get any sort of shots at this distance and with the dark background using a Canon 300mm lens was near impossible though these were more acceptable than the ones I took using a Canon 1.4 and 2.0 converter.
The main problem with using a 300 or 420mm at this range against that background is that you can,t see the bird through the camera apart from a dot so you have to find it in the scope and then lock the tripod and just hope the bird has,nt moved and you,ve taken a picture of a pebble instead, whereas the big 600 mm can be used as a scope to find the bird and even see if its facing the camera or not.
But fear not, Big Bertha 2 is already packing her bags at the Sigma factory and hopefully arriving with me before tomorrow afternoons session, and looking at todays photos I desperately need her.
BS.