Close encounter of the Hazel Grouse kind

Yesterday I had one of my best ever encounters with a Hazel Grouse (and there have been a few now, e.g this one and this one) and one of my worst with Microsoft (of which there have also been many). The Hazel Grouse was the same male that gave me a number of memorable encounters in the spring and after I eventually tracked him down proved to be just as tame/unscared/curious as he was when breeding. I had thought that some of his tameness was part of his strategy to divert attention from his nearby mate but didn’t see any sign of her today so think he is just one of those cooperative individuals that all species have. The Microsoft issue came when I decided to transfer my photos directly onto One Drive. I have previously used external hard drives but with these now full I thought why not use the 1 TB of cloud space that I seem to be paying for. In the process of cutting and pasting from camera memory card to the cloud I managed to lose around 100 files including what should have been some rather nice video footage. Most of the lost photos were most likely crap and I am left with fewer to go through and edit (which saves me time, so silver lining and all that) but I find such technological hiccups infuriating.

Pine Grosbeaks proved difficult to find with just a single very noisy bird giving itself up but I’ll live off the grouse for a few days though 😊

Hazel Grouse (jerpe)

and with the flash

it was dark in the forest and I was hand holding the camera with a shutter speed of 1/100 sec so when the bird moved it was difficult to get in sharp

Pine Grosbeak (konglebit)

it was feeding on spruce shoots and when the birds are in the forest doing this they become much harder to find

Goldfinch (stillits)