Great spotted woodpecker

The day started - like many recently - with heavy rain. but also with a new visitor to our feeders - this lovely great spotted woodpecker. Totally unprepared, I grabbed the camera and the 600mm lens, but both tripods were in the cars, and there was no way I was disturbing the bird by walking out to get it. So this is shot resting on the windowsill, through the glass, handheld at a fairly high ISO. Bear in mind too, that this is a 30 year old manual focus lens. I found trying to get accurate focus in such low light was the hardest part!

A wet walk round the village today was followed up by a trip up Orton fell, during the brighter spell of the day, on Flickr here.

But despite its technical shortcomings, today just had to belong to Woody!

It's clearing outside, and I'm slightly tempted to nip out for a star trail, but it's a little nippy at present!