A rare return to digiscoping

When I heard the Hooded Crow was tarting around in front of folk in the sandplant car park this afternoon, I decided I’d better go and have a look after work.
Predictably there was no sign of it when I got there, but I gave the outer marsh a scan anyway, as Swallows fell from the skies, their tiny wings crusted with ice.
Okay, that didn’t happen, but c’mon this cold, this late into April just ain’t right.
Willow Warbler, Gropper and Whitethroat were all singing on the coast earlier in the day, but none of ’em sounded particularly happy about it.
Parties of Gannets offshore this morning were all wisely heading south.
As I bounced back down the coast road from Marshside, I called in at Fairways on the off chance, and the Hooded Crow (great find by Andy Pryce yesterday morning btw) flew in to forage in the sandy vegetation below the slipway.

As I didn’t have my bigboy P900 with me, I resolved to digi-scope the critter with my old Lumix and battered Nikon ‘scope, and was quite pleased with the results, despite all the scratches, glue and elastic bands holding the rig together.
Undeniably I don’t know the first thing about photography.
If you don’t believe me, next time we meet try talking about f-stops, ISO and exposure and watch my eyes glaze over and my mind drift off to where monkeys play tin-drums just like inside Homer J’s troubled cranium.
Point glass end at pretty thing. Press button. That’s the way to do photography.
This amateurish approach should be patently obvious to anyone looking at the pix on this blog, but hey, birds first, pix later.

Unlike most other Hoodies, this one seems remarkably bold, a quite splendid chap that ignored me as it strutted around feasting on unsavoury items in the old tideline.
Go see it – it’s a fine opportunity to get up close with one of these brilliant corvids without pointing the wheels north or west for way too many hours.
Conventional wisdom from the days when Hooded Crows used to turn up in early spring in the Marsh Farm fields behind Cabin Hill, is that records from round here are Manx birds drifting over, which seems to make sense.