I used to keep a diary of what birds I’d “spotted” in the fields around our house, during our last 27 years in UK . (I noted insects etc etc as well… a real nature-diary)
It was noticeable how the quantity and variety of birds (and insects) fell, year on year…
In the end… it was almost painful to go to my usual viewing window and see virtually nothing… very sad.
and, yes, I’ve seen the Kingfisher here in France, on a few occasions.
First time, just as we were crossing a little stream in the valley below our house. I saw this sparkling “something” out of the corner of my eye and my brain clocked it straight away. Bellowed (softly) to OH to stop the car… and we both sat watching this gorgeous little bird darting hither and thither…
there are many parts of France where the bird life is absolutely amazing… hurrah.
1 Like
Not sure whether the wind turbines add to the prestige or just make it worse 
I’ve had various film SLRs over time, but my first was a second-hand Praktica which I bought as a student - I loved it, and it served me really well until I dropped it down a mountain in Wales after which it was irretrievably broken 
My current, and rather ageing digital SLR is a D300. Have been eyeing up an upgrade for several years now, but somehow just haven’t got around to actually buying one - torn between the Nikon range I know, and a Canon EOS of some kind - most of my stuff is either landscapes or wildlife, but I also want to try astrophotography, so kind of stuck looking for something that is comfortable in a wide range of situations, which inevitably will involve compromise !
I’m not a gear head, but worth mentioning the camera world has gone mirrorless now, and both Nikon and Canon have changed lens mounts. The upside is that DSLR stuf is now a bit cheaper because it’s a dead format and it still takes pictures as well as it ever did. The downside is that the new lenses are a lot more expensive, though in many cases they are optically better.
I went for Sony - they have the most mature system, some of the best lenses, the others are still chasing to catch up in terms of system.
All makes have DSLR to mirrorless adaptors at allow backwards compatibility of lenses, but the only really good one is from Canon.
A small sample below. The panorama pics are all Google’s stitching algorithm, which, I have to say, has impressed me compared to my own previous attempts of stitching with Hugin or other tools. Not all of these are from France, the beach shot and “fjord” are from Ireland.
3 Likes
RicePudding
DrMarkH
1h
Not sure whether the wind turbines add to the prestige or just make it worse
If you can’t appreciate the beauty in wind turbines, you’re missing out on an aesthetic delight.
So many amateur photographers are over obsessed with equipment, yet can’t see beyond visual cliches, and are unlikely to produce interesting photos. By contrast, creative people often find that seemingly limiting technical constraints actually lead to more exciting results.
These days I enjoy using my s/h Sony phone that I can take anywhere in my pocket and later correct the images with my twelve year old copy of Photoshop.
On the contrary, I have absolutely nothing against seeing beauty in technology, it comes as part of my daily work as an IP attorney I would say I’m just a bit “selective” about what I consider aesthetic in an environmental surrounding 
I’ve published several analyses of the history and evolution of landcape aesthetics, particularly in the English Lake District. I was also an early advisor to the Lake District’s second bid for World Heritage Site status. The first bid had failed because it was naively based on the conventional tourist views of so-called natural beauty, whereas my report recommended that the region’s role in the history of landscape aesthetics and the larger cultural historys of ideas should beemphasised. The final application included my arguments and in 2017 the English Lake District was added to UNESCO’s The English Lake District - UNESCO World Heritage Centre
‘Here we entred Westmoreland, a country eminent only for being the wildest, most barren and frightful of any that I have passed over in England,’ (Daniel Defoe,1723-7).
Yet only fifty years later the region had begun to attract its first landscape tourists and many guidebooks were published instructing visitors where exactly to stand for the ‘best’ view of what had become highly valued local scenes.
Fast forward to 2006, when a colleague, whilst showing a party of Nepalese foresters round the region, was told that the Lake District mountains were the worst example of deforestation and landscape degradation that they’d ever seen, and the West had no right to preach to others about environmentalism!
1 Like
No contest. I’d nominate Workington for the ugliest town in the UK…
p.s. I lived there for the last few of my school years - it was awful.
1 Like
