August 18th

Before I get on to today, I got a text from Stephen at around 5pm last night just as I was leaving work to say the REDSTART was still present. I got there half an hour later and managed to get some better views of the bird and find another WHEATEAR, that was in the new orchard, a really nice visit for just 20mins or so.

This morning it took me about an hour to log the moths, there was nothing new and numbers were low, 111 moths of 30 species.
The car park was again full of SPOTTED FLYCATCHERS, 10 would be a conservative estimate, there were also 2 WILLOW WARBLERS, 4 NUTHATCHES, a BULLFINCH, 5 BLACKCAPS and 1 each of GREEN WOODPECKER and GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER. I headed up to the new orchard, there was no sign of yesterdays Wheatear but in the next field the REDSTART was still favouring the fence line just the other side of the car park, I waited to get some shots the bird wasn't playing ball. I was now running short of time so I thought I'd check to see if there were any chats in the oats (sorry called it a wheat field the other day for some strange reason!), as I approached the 2 WHINCHAT and 1 STONECHAT were still together where I last saw them 2 days ago. Amazingly there was more to come, a flock of around 50 birds caught my eye heading south and quite high up, the other day it turned out to be racing pigeons! today though it was 38 WHIMBREL and 2 BAR-TAILED GODWIT (110)!!! What a really good morning, I was more than happy with the birds that had stayed around but the waders were a more than welcome added bonus. The flock did turn and start going east until they were lost from view.
I did have one bit of a downer while out though, during my visit my camera came up with a CF Error, it said to remove the card so I turned the camera off took the card out and replaced when I turned it back on, the images had all gone for the last few days and as the computer has been out of action none were saved anywhere, I was gutted, especially as last nights Wheatear had posed for what I thought might be one of my best efforts so far with the set up I have and the Painted Lady has gone and so on and so on........As I only started taking photos more at the start of the year I am a complete novice and wondered if anyone out there may know if I could have avoided losing the images when the message appeared? I have a Canon 40D, if that information helps to identify a way round the error message.