Andy,
First off (and I should have said this in my first post for which I apologise - if only to confound eRic!), these are fantastic photos and congratulations on finding such a good bird.
Secondly, as I saw the very first one years ago, this (for me at least) is not about twitching or dipping or my HK list (although I would be the first the admit I love adding to my HK list!!). I just really like Smew and would have happily gone to look for this bird on Friday if I had known it was there.
I also understand that not everyone is a birdwatcher, and that for many photographing birds is their primary interest.
That is all great and I understand that. But it is frustrating to see fantastic photos of a great bird that was I was only several km away from on Friday!! It would also have been nice if the location of the bird (e.g. a pond number) had been posted, given that Mai Po is rather large!!!
So I can only encourage anyone who finds rare bird to put the news out quickly either birdline or any birder (my mobile is 90175435 if that helps!), and this may only be to say something along the lines of there being an 'odd duck on Pond 20'. At least then others can have the opportunity to follow up qucikly, and if proves to be nothing of interest, there is no harm done.
So Andy, I don't think you did anything wrong here, and if it seems like some are saying you did (myself included) I think that is simply they would have liked things to have happened differently.
Finally, one or two of the comments here are somewhat difficult to understand, and I'm not sure these are helping the situation...
Paul Leader
[ Last edited by lpaul at 29/11/2010 08:47 ]
