Dipper

Yup, it's the Perth Dipper again. We'd been into town and decided to walk back via the Dipper site. RCB got distracted trying to photograph Swallows, but in the end blipped a Black-headed Gull. We then noticed Mrs L waving at us and bobbing up and down - obviously her sign language for "come over here and see the Dipper". We did and fired off a few shots. It was feeding quite actively, spending quite a lot of time underwater before emerging onto a rock before diving under again.

As you can see, I got quite a nice shot of it, but to be honest, looking down onto a bird isn't going to produce a great shot, so when it flew upstream to a point where I could get down to water level I followed on. It had started raining and the way down was over slimy stones, I was careful, but not careful enough. My foot slipped, my duff knee went at an angle that it really didn't like, a few expletives were screamed and I ended up flat on my back with a rather painful knee and there was quite a clonk from the camera hitting the stones.

Mrs L was obviously concerned, probably not helped by me lying still for a bit waiting for the pain to subside, which it eventually did and I got back to my feet and climbed back up the bank. Poor Mrs L, she really looked worried and then I gave her a row for not keeping an eye on where the Dipper had flown off to. Poor lass.

A hobble home in the now quite heavy rain, an ibuprofen and a cup of coffee and all's fine now. Fired off a few shots on the camera and its fine too. All's well that ends well as they say except I never got my Dipper shot at water level, perhaps I could get Mrs L to do her Dipper impersonation again, or perhaps not.

We're off to Stoer tomorrow for a week's holiday stopping off a Loch Ruthven for a blipmeet with a lady who I hope has forgiven me for This!