Don't you just love anonymous commentators?

Just received the following message from somebody pretending to be an Irish rugby player:

Hi David, I ran your Woodcock photo through my software and as I suspected it has been Photoshoped. (Learn to spell, Shaun!) Please remove, or I will post my evidence on Norfolk's Birdforum thread with screenshots of my software's findings...

  

Posted by Shaun Nickles-O'Brien to Birds of the Heath <http://birdsoftheheath.blogspot.com/>  at 5 March 2018 at 13:45

Couple of points:

You notice there's no mention of the many decent shots of the Great White on this post, nor the previous ones of various Coues's, Brants, Iceland Gulls, Twite, Ibis, Cranes, Purple Heron and a Woodcock on the deck among the many hundreds of other bird images on the blog. There never is: people like Shaun Nickles-O'Brien seem to spend their sad, no-account lives combing through other people's blogs trying to 'catch them out', rather than acknowledging the effort that goes into keeping a daily blog with generally high-quality content.

OK: I used the freehand selection tool in PSP  (I don't possess Photoshop) to select, copy and paste my Woodcock image onto my original background and then enlarge it so you could see what it was.   I do this from time to time: why shouldn't I? It's my blog! Unlike many other people, I'm not sponsored for the hours it takes to compile Birds of the Heath: if you don't like the content, no-one's forcing you to read it!

And why the flying heck would I bother to fake a Woodcock? I've seen hundreds: even had them in the garden. And, of course, Linda was two feet away from me when the Woodcock flew over our heads. We also had a Snipe and a Redshank fly over: glad I didn't post the 'doctored images' I did of them!

Birdforum? I don't post on there: haven't for years apart from to send condolences when someone I knew passed away. Know why? Same reason as a lot of other people: it's full of whinging, carping no-marks like 'Shaun' (A real Irishman would know that the name is spelled 'Sean')

Here are a couple of other Woodcock pictures for 'Shaun' to scrutinize. (They've been improved with PSP too!)