One of he highlights of our visit to WWT Slimbridge – a peregrine falcon landed to consume a bird (lapwing?) that it had just taken in flight. It was just visible to the naked eye and showed up reasonably in portable 8x binoculars, even better in the ‘scope someone had focused on it.

The best my Panasonic TZ80 travel zoom could do resulted in the rather pleasing (to my eye) impressionistic image above. There clearly aren’t enough pixels to give a decent photograph.

Some birders have answers to this. Some carry SLR cameras with huge telephoto lenses, others have a fair sized spotting telescope, possibly with a ‘digiscoping’ attachment to take photographs on their mobile/cell – both have to also cart around a tripod. Three big issues – cost, bulk and weight.

We all have to make our own compromises. Maybe I’ll stick to impressionistic photography. Or what about those bridge cameras…