You may (or not) remember me mentioning that one of my daughters, who is a community nurse, took up bird carving as a hobby over a year ago after a chance encounter with a former carving instructor. One of the carvings she completed last year was of a pair of white-breasted nuthatches. Today, on our last day at the cottage, she ran up to me excitedly to tell me she had just spotted the real thing in a large cedar tree back up the hill from the beach. I took off after her with my camera but the little fellow had disappeared. We searched for a while but found none.
I went back down the trail still looking up into the trees. Now I could hear chirping but it sounded like chickadees. I stopped and watched a while longer and thought I could see some movement of a bird coming headfirst down a tree. I'd never seen one before but my daughter had described this behaviour. The lighting was rather poor under the trees and the bird was flitting this way and that - I just kept firing away at it and finally managed to 'capture' it. Another memory made, and a fitting close to a wonderful family vacation.
(70-200mm f5.6 1/320 sec ISO400)
