We don’t normally go in for wildlife photography at Sailing Scenes (the clue’s in the name, you know). We have never suffered the urge to get up at 3 o’clock in the morning, smear mud on our face, cover our head in bracken and lie in the undergrowth with a lens that’s far too long to be of any use on a boat while waiting for a pink-footed woojie bird to appear. On the other hand, if a pink-footed woojie bird were to hop up and down in front of us and ask for its photograph to be taken while we were out and about doing other things, we might oblige.
That’s pretty much what happened recently with this little creature – only it wasn’t a woojie bird, it was a goldcrest. Now goldcrests are so tiny they make wrens look large and, though they’re no strangers to the English garden, they’re not a bird you often get to photograph by chance. This one, however, happily flitted around just yards away from us. That still didn’t make life easy, because focussing on something that’s little more than three inches long, almost constantly on the move and partially obscured much of the time presents plenty of challenges. We managed a few shots all the same, so here they are – just in case we never get this close to a goldcrest again. And of course, should a pink-footed woojie bird put in an appearance in the near future, we’ll be sure to post those photos too.
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