Hidden photo

Nordmann's Greenshank (David Fettes)

Have you ever had a situation when you've gone through a set of photographs and stumble across a gem?

This evening I was going through a cd of several hundred photos taken by David Fettes, the photographer I took with me to Taiwan last month when I noticed this one. He had inadvertently taken a shot of a Nordmann's Greenshank. This wader is globally endangered with an estimated world population of no more than a thousand birds. Although they can be found wintering (or at least on migration) along the coastlines of southeast Asia, their breeding and wintering grounds are poorly known. They do winter on the coasts of Taiwan, so this bird was not wholly unexpected.

It was a nice surprise though!