Wait in a hide until the one shy animal shows

The Recipe

1. Find the nearest nature reserve with a hide, and one animal there worth the wait: an otter, a kingfisher, a deer at the wood edge, a barn owl at dusk.
2. Go at the edge of the day it's most likely out, first light or the last hour before dark, not the middle.
3. Get into the hide quietly, settle, and stop moving; a hide only works once you've become part of it.
4. Watch everything, not only for your animal, and learn what the common birds are doing, because they announce when something bigger arrives.
5. Sit out the empty stretch instead of leaving; the wait is the price, and most people pay it and then quit ten minutes short.
6. When it shows, stay still and watch it do a whole thing, hunt or feed or cross the water, before you reach for a photo.
7. Give it the time it takes, even if that runs to the last of the light.
8. Walk out able to describe one animal doing one real thing, from memory.