FLAPS DOWN......

.... finally came up for "air" this afternoon after finally recovering the pics (seems most of them) from the crashed hard drive. Decided to do the job myself with some software called "Wondershare Recovery"! 
Ooops, a plug!!?? But, you may need to know one day and will save you a lot of chasing around!

Have learnt a lot after asking many people many questions on the issue, of course with many differing opinions from "will never happen" to "cost you a heap"! 
Although still a lot of sorting to do, at least it seems we have a "new start", and all it cost was A$50 and plenty of my time.

Anyway, even with being a dull miserable day, with intermittent showers, off to the mighty Nepean River. Noticed on one of the dead tree branches what I thought the dollar bird, and nearly did not stop, but noticed the beak shape different! 

It seems we have a new find for me in our area..... a starling!  Never heard or been aware of these around here before. 

After shopping, called into my private wetlands just in time to catch this guy landing, and liked the "flaps down" approach. Also found my duckie family and as you can see they have all but reached the "time to leave' age! And, pleased to see the original number is still around, so known lost as thought before.

Enjoy, and have a look in LARGE  to see the fine landing style!!

... will back blip for yesterday, had a shot of our first camellia sasanqua burst open for this year, and with recovery mode going on with hard drive did not want to mess things up. It took over 9 hours to scan and recover.