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Saturday 13 September 2014

A two-edged sword!

I've only been photographing wildlife 'properly' for three and a half years, since Linda (Mrs B) bought me my first DSLR and a 200mm zoom. I've gradually improved my kit - and hopefully, technique - to my current 150 - 500 Sigma and Pentax x-30. The original motivation was to get me out and about, having retired from teaching, and I have amazingly reversed a type-2 diabetes diagnosis and - for now at least - have a decently low blood sugar

This blog was intended to be a place for me to keep an online diary of what I get up to and what I see, more than anything to 'grip off' poor Linda ( a 400+ lister!) who has two more years left until she retires.

To my surprise and delight, I find this blog has become quite popular, but with that has come an unexpected add-on: the armchair pundit comment!

Not every picture truly reflects the details that one, as a naked eye observer, can pick out. In the three  years this blog has been online, I've probably had thirty or so putative identifications discussed here and elsewhere. If the comments are constructive and intended to be helpful (like that by Jim two posts back!) or Ben Lewis, James, Steve Smith and many others I of course leave them on the site. But I really don't understand the mentality of those who feel the need to be aggressively critical about pictures on what, after all, is my personal blog!

So please: if you have anything constructive or informative to tell me, I'd love to hear from you. But if you just wish to show off how clever you are or how close you are to a 500 list, I'm not interested. Like all of us, I do make mistakes: but honestly I've been watching wildlife for 50+ years, have seen over 420 species in the UK and do know what a Sabine's Gull looks like!

Rant over! I promise to try to maintain 'Birds of the Heath' as a - hopefully - enjoyable record of the wildlife of the mid-Yare valley, and will certainly not follow the trend of making it a cut and paste job of other people's birds. At least then, if I get something wrong - it's my mistake, not someone else's!



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