A Birders Lament

As you now realise I am back in Kent for the winter. We took ourselves over to Sheppey and started at Leysdown to perhaps see the Turnstones or perhaps Sanderling. nothing spectacular there so retreated back to Harty, at the top of the hill that descends to the bend with the fleet to your right I stopped and gazed up the fleet my bino's they did not produce anything of note so returned to the car looking east towards the raptor viewpoint I could See a large discolouring in the grey sky which was heading our way, then the honking and noise could be heard and getting louder as you have probably guessed I was gazing at a huge movement of geese, Greylag and Canada a rough accounting gave me circa 1500 or more birds, grabbing my camera, fitting a 400 zoom lens I fired away, capturing all three leading vee formations and getting shot's as they flew up the fleet towards the new bridge crossing, and capturing on the final shot a landscape which included the geese. We entered the car and discussed our good fortune at seeing this wonderful sight so early into our day, I began to think I was into a rare purple patch and that RSPB Elmley was going to produce something special. We cruised up to the Raptor Viewpoint and I could contain myself no longer, I stopped, grabbed the canon 20d SLR , activated the preview button the screen glared at me and in the middle, as if framed, it read NO MEDIA INSERTED, I had left the 4 gigabyte media card at home, after calling myself unmentionable names I rummaged through my kit bag and found a 256 MB card, that did save the day, but the geese will have to be a pleasant memory. There must be a moral their somewhere.