A Bohemian feast and a dead Sigma

[Donna]

Finally , the moment I have been waiting for , for years ... Bohemian Waxwings!! ... They found my flowering crabapple tree and were feasting on the tiny red apples .... So , I grab a camera and got outside . When I got around to the front of the house they scattered ...Gone! ... Back inside I went and there they were , in the tree again ... I cammo-ed up and gave it another try . This time sneaking behind the house and along the cover of the trees . They got cagey and flew again , but I continued on and plowed my way through the thigh-deep snow in the lawn to hide by a bushy little spruce tree and wait .... and freeze ... and wait....

I turned on my camera ... only to hear that sickening sound , the one that I have heard far too often , since the purchase of that #$$%# Sigma lens .. That sound that makes my blood curdle ... DEAD!..AGAIN...GRRRRRR!!!! ... well not quite yet ... it has to go through it's theatrics first ... with it's horrible sound effects and prolong the aggony ..... This thing dies twice a year ... Only this time , it has just came back from the warrenty fix-it place and has only been out and used twice , about 25 shots taken . A barn and a Moose ... Now that I think about it ... that was on the same day , so I only got one day out of it .... Good thing I didn't remember that sooner .. I would have really been fuming ...

So , I put the camera and the lens on manual focus . The birds came back and I got a few good shots . Not near as many as I should have got , because I was having heck of a time trying to focus on my flighty targets . It's pretty hard to focus without the focus screen , like we had in the olden days ... and it didn't help , that I didn't have my glasses on

So here is the bird I have waited so long to get a shot of . This is the first photo that came up when I veiwed them after loading them onto my computer ... I was really happy with it and it sure helped ease some of my grieving over my dead lens .