Bad luck strikes!

They say when things are going wrong for you they really go wrong.  Today I set off in what I’d hoped would be a day out with my camera and hopefully catch up on some photography and wildlife.  First stop was to see if the Rabbits from past visits had recovered their numbers and worth an early morning visit.  When I arrived on location and took my camera and Sigma lens out, to my horror the lens and camera detached from one another – or more correctly my camera and part of the lens detached from the rest of the lens.  My first thought was that this is not a good thing, then how did this happen?  It was fine the previous day when I packed it away and did my pre-checks, then I remembered earlier I dropped my bag.  It seemed pretty innocuous at the time as it was from barely a foot in height but it must have landed awkwardly or was just bad luck.

The result, as you can see from the images above is that the section of the lens that attaches itself to the camera (left) has sheared off breaking at the three connectors.  Needless to say I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic to continue with my day and this lens won’t be taking any pictures with this lens in its current state.   On returning home I emailed Sigma and informed them of my plight and hoped they could give me a quote on how much this will cost to repair and now await a reply.  To be honest though it doesn’t look promising.  This couldn’t have come at a worse time for me, particularly for financial reasons and if the cost they quote me with is as expensive as I fear it may be, that may be that for the foreseeable future.   I  checked on the net for any clues as to a cost but one example was 40% of the lenses price new which if true is crazy.  It would be a case of replacing the small section which clearly screws onto the main part of the lens, so how much this converter size component plus service charges would be, I can’t even guess. So, basically, I will be back to pre 2010 days before I got the lens.  This will take some adjustment as I’ve taken the luxury of the extra reach for granted.  It will be back to my 400mm or 300mm lenses both of which have tended to be brought out only for their uniqueness as I’ve been using the Sigma now for 90% of my wildlife photography. I am now left trying to console myself by consuming copious amounts of Easter chocolate in the hope of releasing a few endorphins – it doesn’t appear to be working thus far – and looking to a future without my pride and joy lens.

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Some Kites in Flight…and a Cormorant

I’ve been busy trying to improve on the look of my blog as I’ve been unhappy with the image size restrictions this particular template has, preferring to have larger viewed images than it allows.  No luck so far, so I may have to scrap this current look and start again.  Just to keep things ticking over in the mean time, I’ve got these images, though they don’t look very impressive so small, particularly the first Kite image and two Cormorant images which, despite the latter being an otherwise ‘boring, plain’ looking bird, with its feather detail actually looks quite impressive on the full size image.  I will be uploading these images to my website so they can be viewed in their full glory. I didn’t realise when photographing the first Kite image, just how intently it was looking straight at me!  I have to admit, I do have a soft spot for birds of prey, but I particularly like just watching the local Red Kites.  There’s something special about just seeing them gliding effortlessly overhead occasionally making that piercing high pitched cry.  Although at this time of year they will be dispersing around the region from their wintering roosting, I hope to get out soon and get some more images of them. I’m surprised that nobody in the North East has come up with the same kind of idea as Gigrin Farm in Wales and have a feeding station set up.  If anybody knows why, I would be curious to find out.

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Kielder Water Bird of Prey Centre

Having somehow managed to delete the original post for this, (D'oh!) I’m reposting it again – original pictures but not the original text as I can’t remember exactly what was written. The images were taken during visits over recent years, at the  Kielder Water Bird of Prey Centre in Northumberland, a great place to visit if you want to see birds of prey close up and where they do daily displays.  Most of the birds are not found in the UK though some, like the Golden Eagle can be found in Scotland as can sometimes in winter, the Snowy Owl.  The Eagle Owl has been regularly spotted here in the North East of England – either a visitor from the continent or an escaped captive bird – though they are now known to be breeding here.

Snowy Owl

Harris Hawk

Griffin Vulture

Great Grey Owl

Golden Eagle

Great Grey Owl

Bald Eagle

Another Snowy

Eagle Owl

Additional – If you’re interested in photographing the birds here, this place is a great opportunity.  All birds are housed in locations that could be easily photographed even with a compact camera.  They run a number of flying displays on the days they are open, just check on their website for the schedules.  They get the birds to fly from a perch in the display field, to another member of staff who’s in with the those watching, so they could fly over your head!  You definitely don’t need a 500mm lens.

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Spring?… Well, not quite!

Beginning of the Week A rare bout of wall to wall sunshine brought me out of the doldrums to see what wildlife was on offer.  An opportunity to photograph two birds in particular that have eluded my previous attempts – the Bullfinch and and the particularly pretty Long Tailed Tit – were too much to pass up.  The former seems to nowadays be rarer than I remember them to be during my childhood, where they seemed to be quite common.  The latter just seems to always stay hidden away.  The bright, almost spring like sunshine helped bring the best out of the images with a fast shutter speed enabling me to ‘freeze’ them as they didn’t stay in any one spot for more than a second and I resorted to pre focusing on one spot where they would stop briefly.

End of the Week Within a week, winter had returned with a fall of snow blanketing Tyneside. Still, I can’t resist the temptation in going out in this kind of weather.

A post of mine wouldn’t be complete without some kind of rant at dog walkers.  A sign at the entrance of this nature reserve saying ‘dogs to be kept on lead’.  Of the dozen plus dog walkers I saw, only one had bothered to adhere to this rule.  kudos to that one individual. (not the individual in the picture who had just walked past that sign!)

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