My afternoon trip to Wheldrake Ings was diverted to North Duffield Carrs thanks to Mark Coates letting me know a birder had found a female Red-crested Pochard. This would be a new York area bird for me, so worth a look. I messaged a few people and soon joined global birder Andy Walker in Garganey Hide where we soon picked up the duck. Disappointingly, the bird was leucistic and hanging out with the local Mallards, so presumably was not long out of captivity, and not quite the grade to make it on to my York list. A bit plastic, in other words.
Nevertheless, I spent an enjoyable hour or so at NDC chatting to Andy, with good views of a juvenile Peregrine, stacks of Pintails and my first LDV Oystercatchers of the spring. I tried out my new phone with a bit of phonescoping, which worked well. I have made an adaptor using my lens hood superglued to a cheap phone case. This worked well, particularly when combined with the voice commands, meaning I didn't have to touch the phone at all to take a pic. Sadly, the distance of most stuff undermines the quality of some of the potential, but the Chaffinch pic I took in the garden this morning demonstrates that this could be pretty cool.
Phone scoped Chaffinch, using Samsung A5 down a Ziess 60 Scope, on 20x.
Plastic fantastic RCP.
Distant Peg
Oyks, Curlews etc enjoying the late winter sunshine.
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