It’s almost the end of February, it has been dull and dreary weather without any of the promised brightness. So what to do on a day like today? Well, there is always the possibility of the Firecrest at Topsham and who knows it may brighten up. The Chinese Bike was revved up, the layers went on and I took the camera with me just in case. I armed myself with the mp3 player and decided I would see if the Firecrest could be called in. The outing turned out to be quite an interesting one. No sign of any Firecrest even though I walked the muddy path playing the recording as I went to see if I got a reaction. After a while I climbed on to the viewing platform that looks up the Exe Estuary, there was a man there with a Prime Lens worth more than my car so I suspected that there must be something worth looking at. It was in fact quite an event. Spread out in front of me was a Greenshank, Redshank and Grey Plover. I struck up conversation with the “Prime Lens man” who turned out to be a Scot called Colin. Firecrest were mentioned and he quickly produced a series of stunning images of the Firecrest out of his bag that he had taken last week ……. envious or what! Then as we compared cameras a Chiffchaff landed in the bush to our right, not too far from us, apparently the exact bush that the Firecrest had been in. Chaffchaffs are not Firecrests of course but they are good to see in late winter and I was pleased to be able to get a couple of half decent shots in the awful light! I was hoping it might be one of the rarer sub-species but I am pretty sure that it wasn’t. It posed pretty well and we both took lots of shots. It was interesting to compare the results and see that mine were almost as good as his in spite of the fact that his equipment was worth approximately £4.000 more thqt mine. Having said that I was/am envious but there is a limit!