First archived talk at User talk:Arpingstone/ArchiveMar3-2003
Second archived talk at User talk:Arpingstone/ArchiveJul10-2003

Hi!
I'm on holiday from 10th July 2003 to 17th July 2003 in Brixham in the county of Devon in southern England. So I won't see anything put here until the 16th July. Cheers!
Adrian Pingstone 08:50 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hi Adrian. Just looking at your photos for Tattoo, could you crop the image

down a little further? With the tiny images we work with it seems we really need to fill the image almost completely with the subject or the detail gets completely lost. --Robert Merkel 06:23 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)

No problem, Adrian. I couldn't be bothered figuring out how to do it either, so I just re-uploaded the same picture from my hard drive. (I took a moment to sharpen it a fraction first, though sharpening only seems to work well when you have resized. That was taken with my old camera and was not resized, just cropped.) My duck is a female Blue-billed Duck, and I think she is the prettiest thing I've met since ... oh, since I was 17 and full of hormones, I guess. Here is all of her. The other picture, of course, just shows her tail feathers. I haven't written the 'pedia entry yet, but if you read Musk Duck you'll get a pretty reasonablle idea: female Blue-Bill Ducks look very like female Musk Ducks, and are equally fond of diving to the bottom to look for tasty morsels. She's just on her way down.

I've spent two full days a week taking bird pictures these last five or six weeks (bad weather or no bad weather), but that shot (at full size, not cramped down to small resolution) is the one I like best of all. But one day, I'll get one of her on the way up, just breaking the water. A very difficult shot to take, as they stay down for anything between 10 seconds and a minute, and if they want to they can come up anywhere at all within 20 meteres or more. So you have to guess where you think she will come up, and then guess when you think she will come up, and squeeze the shutter release a half-second before you see anything. But if I keep at it long enough, sooner or later, my lucky number wil come up. Cross some fingers for me! Cheers -- Tony

Hi Adrian, I hadn't realised that you had identified the Paignton zoo picture. We will make a birder of you yet. jimfbleak

Thanks Adrian - I'll have to write a few species articles soon, since I put on a few pics myself. Jim