What to do with rejects?

In a digital age with so many pictures takenI find myself deleting often hundreds of images at a time. Sometimes, especially if it isa a new bird then the the very first images from a shoot are the ones that end up in the digital trashcan. With a new bird I always want to see it first and try to see it well then try to get images. But once the record shot is in the can then more time & care can be taken to get better, much better pictures. At the end of the day I can find myself with a very large number of pictures that look almost identical and I continually ask myself how many can or should I keep? I know for example that I deleted something like 700 in focus and sharp images of White-tailed Plover. Why? Well because I had similar images of the bird or perhaps a feather was out of place, or no highlight in the eye or just because I did not like the pose of the bird. I certainly binned a lot of shots that many people would have been pleased with, especially those folk that could not get into see tha bird on its brief two-day visit to Seaforth last May.

So two weeks ago I was birding on the Inner Gulf Coast of Thailand and looking at Spoon-billed Sandpipers, image below. A fantastic bird and definitley one of the most sought after species for serious birders. Although seen well the images are only likely to be my own record shots. Especially seeing what a group of photographers have managed to achieve in China, or even what Birdwatch Editor Dominic Mitchell managed a couple of days later. But the day was not all about the Spoonies. Other Target species were Nordmann's Greenshank and Long-toed Stint. The Nordmann's stayed distant and took to flight when a flock of Brown-headed Gulls flew off. So would the Long-toed Stint save the day photographically speaking? I'd almost given up when I got onto a small group of birds feeding on a saltpan close to the car at Pak Thale. Curlew Sandpiper, Pacific Golden Plover, Broad-billed Sandpiper and the Long-toed Stints. The stints perfromed fantastically well and I managed a range of shots better than I could of wished for. But now I am asking myself what to do with all the rejects ? Below is one of the rejects.

A Spoonfull of Gorgeousness

A brief update from Ao Nang, Krabi, Thailand where I am awaiting transfer to the island Koh Phi Phi Don where hopefully three species of Frigatebird await.

Last week in a day trip from the fast-paced, hectic & teeming Bangkok I was driven 2 hours down the coast by Peter Ericsson to Laem Pak Bia, Pak Thale and the Kings Project in search of Spoon-billed Sandpiper. Peter is a Ex-pat Swede now living in Thailand, and if you thought that my driving was fast then Peter has that Scandinavian rally-driving knack of very fast driving and late braking. Several times in the passenger seat I was stamping on the non-existant passenger seat brake pedal. Despite that Peter is THE man for guiding down the coast and has never failed to get his customers the Spoonies, Nordmann's Greenshank, Malaysian Plover and the enigmatic and undescribed White-faced Plover.

I can't say that I was never nervous of connecting with the target species, because I was and kept logging on to Birdforum for updates. Thanks also due to Mark Andrews who was leading the Wildwings Tours because he even gave me a Welcome to Thailand text to say that there was an incredible 7 Spoonies on site.

Once on site at Pak Thale it took less that 5-minutes to connect with a single bird feeding on the saltpans with Red-necked Stints. Fantastic! A distant bird but tick never-the-less. Further scanning produced another three birds feeding together and a little closer. A joy to watch but never really close enough to get mega pictures.

More to follow but not till I get home

Black or Red

I'm sure there are bloggers out there in the blogosphere who know exactly what they want to write about and just get on with. Many are extremely prolific and sometimes I wonder where they get the inspiration from? Some blogs are just the diary of birders who seem to be out in the field every day and their entries are lists of what they have seen on their patch, these can be useful. Others are musings about the next split and in-depth taxonomy are without a doubt a great reference source. But a lot of blogs are just the vehicle for photographers to show off their work and tend to be about just what they have photographed recently which is basically what this blog will be about. But is anybody really interested what you have to say or do folks just want to see the images? Afterall this blog is unlikely to be as interesting or as libellous as Mr White's Reservoir Cats or as expletive-crammed as Skill-bills or are they just merely the musings of the same Glossop birder. So where do folks get the inspiration from?



Which leads me to todays posting. I was looking at the this blog and noticed the labels and they were all colour labels, Pink-footed Goose etc. This got me thinking, a couple of 'Red' birds in the first posting of the year and I wondered whether there was more 'Red' on the BOU list or 'Black' birds outnumbered  'Red'. So I ran a query on my Excel BOU list. The results  were initially confusing because the search kicked out some anomalies such as eaRED, whiskeRED, collaRED and barRED. So some birding trivia, there are 32 Black species on the BOU list and 32 Red species too when using the British Vernacular name.



Black with red

Is this Black or Red?

Both Black & Red



Red All Over

Well it's now 2011 and I did say that I was going to start a blog again, but that was in November. I even have a follower, Thanks Des for your patience but the back end of 2010 was just so busy at work. So having updated the website and culling a lot of images and pages it is now time to get back to writing blog entries. Re-writing the website is just so time consuming and mind-numbingly dull, I'd rather sort out the sock drawer.

I seem to have missed all my opprotunities this winter to shoot Waxwings although I've seen them all over the country but not had the opportunity or light conditions to get anything decent, maybe there is time yet but I think with most of the berries gone so has this winters photo opportunities.

What has been good though has been the 1w Red-necked Grebe at Fairhaven Lake at Lytham. I've had good sessions before with Red-necked Grebe in both summer and winter plumages but as Red-necked Grebes are fairly scarce in the North West any opportunity must be taken. I had two visits in different light conditions and at first thought that the bird looked unwell and would not survive. A couple of days later the bird was apparently feeding welll and was catching small sticklebacks. It had the annoying habit of turning its back on the photographers when it cought a fish and would swim away and deal with the spiny fish.

 A few days later and  a repeat visit to the Fylde was called for. This time the target was the 1st Winter Red-breasted Goose. The first visit resulted in not seeing the bird, alot of shooting on the Fylde and all the Pink Feet had gone to a field that was difficult to view. On the second visit the bird was still distant but viewable and got better when flushed by a guy entering the field  with two terriers.



So there it is, the first post of 2011, lets see if I can keep it up throughout the rest of the year

New blog coming

Back, way back in the dim and distant past, I started a blog but never kep it up. Well it is time to dust off the keyboard and start a new one.

This is just a holding page until I am ready to publish