Siren call of the Luscinia cyanurus

After days of dripping dreariness the weather improved enough for me to walk up the hill today. Barely bright enough to see a bird let alone photograph one I was pleased to find a reasonably confiding Red-flanked bluetail. It is almost certainly the same bird I see each time as it is consistently in the same location. As the winter has drawn on it seems to have become less flighty. The hill is favoured by dog walkers and possibly the RFB is now so accustomed to them that it barely deigns to hop a few feet away as someone approaches.

I had with me the 100-400mm zoom on a 7D body and I thought this would get me some semblance of decent size in the frame. And then, just as I was zooming out, the ****** thing locked. Wouldn't zoom in or out. Thank you Canon! I was stuck at precisely 220mm. And there it stayed. So the images you see above are huge crops and shot at ISO800 as the 7D starts to get yucky above that. My exif data tells me they were shot after 4pm.

About 30 mins later I set off from home again lugging the 800mm f5.6 on a tripod. As I did so I knew what would happen. Carrying this gear up a very steep hill left me gasping for breath or beer, either could do if I weren't teetotal, after barely 5 minutes. And by then there was no light and no bird. People passing by looked at me in bewilderment, as well they might.

The RFB is however a lovely bird and this is probably a female. It called several times. The call is described as a "coarse whistle". That sounds about right to me. It stayed close to the ground most of the time, picking at whatever it could find, occasionally hopping up onto low branches or rocks. The Latin name is going to be problematic as the HK List has this as Tarsiger cyanurus but Brazil (Birds of East Asia) has it firmly in the robin bucket. I don't suppose the bird (or indeed I) really cares. Taxonomy tends to leave me mildly chilly although I do know people who get all of a quiver when they discover they have an armchair tick or perhaps have lost a tick through some taxonomist somewhere splitting or lumping "species". Some people claim 16 different sorts of Chiffchaff I believe but to me Chiffchaff is fine as long as it is not a Willow warbler. I suspect I shall have my bins confiscated for that. If I had unlimited time I might feel differently. But I don't. And I shall be back at work before you can say "phylogenetic species concept" and in the words of my ex-brother "life's too short to stuff a mushroom".

Goodnight children everywhere. Tune in again to Listen with Moth-er.