Practice makes...

The Safari had a long lie in this morning and when we did eventually crawl out of our pit and open the curtains we saw we were right not to have put the mothy out as it would have been full of water. The wind was brisk too and picking up all the time, it would a become a real hooley by lunchtime.

We did a few chores and bots n bobs round the house including moving the feeders from the thicket at the end of the garden to as near to the house as we could hang them and then decided to have a practice with camera for next week. The first thing we noticed is that everything on the camera is set up for right-handers and we're going have enforced left handedness for a couple or three weeks. Simple things like taking the SD card out become tricky. We reckon the camera will only be used on the tripod shooting through a window and thankfully we have a remote control which should make things a bit easier for focusing and picture taking.

Today's attempts weren't brilliant. It was very windy out there and the feeders were dancing round like nine-year olds at an X-factor party, the light wasn't good and the best we could get is angled through a double glazed rain soaked window. Might have to set up in the kitchen which would be nearer and not shooting at an angle but we would be further from the glass, not only that the tripod will be in the way of the kettle - nightmare!

Unfortunately we can't get the feeders any nearer.

Processing the pics is also going to be a little awkward wrong-handed but we've set ourselves a challenge...we have to get decent pics (aka much better than above)  of a minimum of 10 species, seven shouldn't present too much of a problem bit the next three will be tricky, still we'll have three weeks to do it before we have our hols up in Scotland in mid October.

Later in the afternoon we headed off over the hill to the coast and into the teeth of the wind. Our usual place was well sheltered from the south-westerly and we were hopeful. It wasn't long before we realised our hopes were dying fast...we couldn't even find a Common Scoter! We struggled with a handful of Lesser and Great Black Backed Gulls until we came a cross a Sandwich Tern.

There were long periods of eye watering in the wind with nothing happening and still nothing happened...another Sandwich Tern broke the monotony and that was the best we got.

In the cruelest twist of fate possible back at Base Camp we learnt that a FEA'S PETREL had gone south past Bardsey Island...let's just pray that it didn't pass us undetected!!! It probably almost definitely didn't, please say it didn't...ahh well we'll get one tomorrow on Patch 2.

Where to next? Penultimate day at work tomorrow, likelihood is that the waves will be crashing over the wall at high tide in the morning but lunchtime could be good.

In the meantime let us know who's all on the wrong side of what in your outback.