Snuffly

Is there such a thing as 'blipneurosis'? Where you start to think that there's *nothing* to blip today and you might have to Emergency Blip again?

No no me neither. Never had that. Don't know why I mentioned it!

So I'm staring out of the kitchen window into the garden looking for inspiration. I just can't see anything *interesting*. I know this is the wrong idea. I know it's about seeing the interesting in the ordinary but I'm tired and my imagination is... see... I can't even imagine a good analogy...

Then a swoop of long tailed tits fly straight for the apple tree onto the fat ball feeders. Awesome! That'll make a great blip! They're so cute close up and they cling onto the feeders like.... like.... birds, with their long tails at right angles to each other, 6 or 7 to a feeder. Brilliant!

But I need to get closer so I literally circumnavigate the garden in stealth mode, getting into the undergrowth round the back, bits of holly and conifer in my hair (accident, not camoflauge) and I crouch down under the holly tree.

Amazingly they're still there and I get some OK shots, then the goldfinch drops by and again I get some OK shots. But the light's fading and the pics are a bit noisy, plus the angle I'm having to shoot means there's a bloomin great house in the background, nothing clean. If I cropped the picture it would be blurry when I blew up the birds...

But then the long tail tits flew into the holly right above my head! But they wouldn't stay still. They knew damn well I was there and teased me by flying around the myriad of branches in the darkness of the holly knowing there was no way I could get a focus on them. I'm surprised they didn't finish the job and organise a mass crap on my head.

As the birds disappeared I heard a shuffling behind me over the fence on the railway embankment. I thought it would probably be a blackbird digging in the leaves for slugs and snails so I got the camera ready. And looked over. Nothing. Then more shuffling... hey it's a hedgehog!!! Brilliant!

He was a baby and he froze as he saw me, his head buried in some ivy so I couldn't photograph his hedgehog head. That's no good! You need the cute little face. So I climbed over the fence and tried to get an angle, all the time facing an internal moral dilemma, knowing he was probably terrified. OK ten seconds, that's all then if I don't get a good picture I'll... erm... (prod him with a stick?) No!!! Of course not!

Anyway a few seconds later he looked up then toddled off; the picture above is intentionally blurry to give the impression of speed. And not because I was hanging on to a tree with one hand to stop myself falling down a precarious embankment onto the railway lines and trying to photo Snuffly with the other...