St Kilda Wren.

One of our number elected to look for a wren this morning, so I asked if I could accompany him; once he’d found one, I realised why I hadn’t. We have wrens in the garden, they are quite secretive and we usually only see a brown streak travelling from one bush to another. Then, when they sing, IT'S LOUD, and we can see that their backs and wings are a fairly uniform reddish-brown colour and their tails are cocked at a jaunty angle. The St Kilda wren is none of those things – I couldn’t find them because I didn’t know what I was looking for.
 
It started raining in the evening; by the time we went out to recreate the mandatory post-card shot, it was hissing down so I did as much of the setting up as possible inside. When the nice man came round with a cloth to dry my lens he was surprised that it didn’t need doing. I have a raincoat for the camera which, combined with a lens hood, had worked perfectly – I wasn’t so fortunate and could have done with a quick wipe down. The nice man then had a look at my screen and informed me that the shot was over-exposed; I showed him the perfect histogram and he wandered off muttering about the need to get it right in camera. While I’m quite certain that had he taken the picture the way he wanted me to, his final result would have been much better than mine, but I was surprised that he didn’t grasp the principle of exposing to the right. In fairness, he’s a good chap and everyone harbours a few prejudices and misconceptions; Mrs TD informs me that even I sometimes get things wrong.