A right royal pain in the proverbial!
What else would I be doing at the weekend, but to hone my stealth like reflexes by tracking and hunting** wildlife ... Ah yes, the wind in my hair, the mud .. (that is mud right?) under my feet, off I went in search of wildlife models.
(**DISCLAIMER - hunting only with camera's. No animals were hurt in the making of this blog entry)
Eager to capture the wildlife of Scotland with as little effort as possible, I made my way to the Huntly Bird of Prey Centre. The long drive to Huntly did nothing to dampen my spirits nor stem my creative juices'. I didn't event get disappointed when I discovered that a hill which was bellowing like it was on fire turned out to be all smoke and no action shots. But...
... upon arriving at the Falconry centre I discovered that it was closed to visitors for the winter. Oh rats! My lazy foolproof plan was foiled! Or was it?
By chance I encountered a couple of Stags too engrossed in each other than to give any notice to me. I started happy snapping like the shutterbug I was born to be - enjoying the opportunity I had been given. The stags seem to be giving me that knowing look, you know the one, the one like they enjoyed getting their photos taken. I began to fantasise that they probably were supermodels in a previous life. And there in lies my mistake... whilst my mind was elsewhere I failed to realise that I and my clicky camera were now the object of both their aggression male interest.
The moment I took the camera away from my eye Irealised how big and close they really were! EEK... now i've been in a few scrapes before now and I've always prided myself on my ability to think quickly and problem solve, but in that moment all I could come up with was throwing the apple i'd taken with me to the ground and running away. Like a small child's panic around a wasp I dumped my apple and legged it....
Despite being a toot scared, having short legs and carrying a camera in hand I managed to climb over a barbwire fence and back to my car, thus narrowly dodging the dominant males very close up attention
And as my heart rate recovered back in the safety of my car and I was still smarting from indignation at having been chased by an animal with half my brain capacity, the remote thought that someone might've seen me crossed my mind. If you see a camcorder movie of a similar event - it's probably me. I bet David Bailey doesn't have these problems!
