BW

..but blue and white not black and white, and unfortunately not quite a mono for Monday ;))

Yes, of course you can see where I've been today and very lovely it was in the spring sunshine.  So a long walk on the marshes trying, rather ineptly, to work out what birds were there.  To start with I thought there were nothing but gulls, but although there were a lot of them and they were very noisy, I gradually picked out quite a few others: shelduck, eider duck, brent geese, avocets, lapwings, waders.  And this rather irresistible egret, who looked as if he was in a very bad temper, stabbing the water for fish.

There are problems with photographing there though.  The main bird-breeding areas are rightly sanctuaries, surrounded with a wire fence and narrow waterways, so you frequently find yourself shooting from slightly too far away and through the wire fence (as here). 

Because of this I'm thinking seriously of getting a teleconverter.  I did talk to the Winchester camera shop who were rather off-putting.  They said teleconverters degrade the lens quality so much it's better to just crop a bit more from round the picture edges.  Well if that was the case it would be a ridiculous waste of £400+ - so I thought I'd ask you lovely people if you've ever used one and whether they're as hopeless as I've been told??

Okay, that's enough spouting from me.  Hope you've all had/are having as nice a day as I have  xx