Cheerful chappie

After yesterday's image and my rather depressing news I thought that I needed to go for something more uplifting this morning, hence this cheerful fellow.  

My patience lurking in the bushes  early this morning was rewarded with a friendly robin that patiently sat on the fence watching me and, once he had decided that I really wasn't any sort of a threat, posing nicely.  

I'm not sure what any neighbours would have thought if they'd looked out of their bedroom windows and seen me.  The 800mm lens isn't a small thing, but fortunately it was sufficiently early for nearly all of them to be fast asleep.  Certainly there were no blue flashing lights accompanied by guys in fluorescent jackets asking for a "quiet word, sir" with what passes for politeness.

I was really pleased to find that I could manage the lens and camera combination still' without too much difficulty' despite the soreness in my side.  The camera and lens combined weigh 3.725Kg. This shot was handheld, and yes, the vibration reduction system allows for slower shutter speeds than this even with this lens, but even so, it's not a bad result. With little birds there's every chance of a twitch of some sort which means that I tend to favour faster shutter speeds where the conditions allow, so I wouldn't want to go much below 1/500s in any event.