Before the cops approached me I noticed them going to the management hut, but then I didn't give further notice, thought weird cops in Lido which is not very common. But then as I got immersed into the shots again they crossed the long metall boundary and gates (which goes to show that I was way away from the play area and in fact in the woods itself) and they came straight to me.

They seemed to know exactly where I was from the moment they came out from the hut so the management people might have pointed straight at me, so they were inside the situation.

I can almost assure you that if you go with the SLR at Lido cops will be called again. Specially if its a day like today when there are lots of people around.

last one of the batch.
The more I use the DA*60-250 the more I like its versatility

That's how you were sure it was her. What a nasty piece of work.
I wonder what kind of satisfaction these people get in having this kind of behaviour. Frankly, one needs to really lower oneself tremendously to act like that.

Bob
these insects are really tiny Bob, check here link

best way to capture them is with a macro lens but after today's lengthy enthusiastic and bubbly thread about 60-250 and 50-135 I thought I should put the 60-250 to its paces . They are easy to capture with this lens but of course you are better served with a macro

lol, when I got home I walked in and told my wife briefly that cops had stopped me at Lido, she went through the roof lol. Started telling her the story but she stopped me saying she wants to listen to the story properly so better do it after putting the kids to bed later lol.

She has a shorter fuse, she has Mongolian blood I better not tell her that I know who the woman I suspect called the cop is

Paul, agree there yes. Police could have handled slightly differently, but by no means my anger is with them. I could even see that they were hoping I would make their life easy hence when I offered to show them the photos before they asked me I could see the sigh of relief in them. And obviously they were doing their job, but covering themselves also. At one time I got questions from the lady cop saying things like "oh this must be quite an expensive camera", oh, do you do this often? do you sell them? do you do this professionally. For goodness sake, she was trying to assess lots of things by trying to dig it out that way rather than asking me directly. When you have been around the block as long as I have and been dealing with people from different backgrounds, you detect hints from miles away. But I was only happy to satisfy her with answers. One thing that left it so obvious that she just wanted to dig further by playing the word game was when I handed her the camera and showed her the cursor to go forward and check at the images, first couple of good old Andy lol, and then the hoverfly and all she kept on saying "oh fantastic, oh so great, beautiful looking images" and knowing that a hoverfly taken with the 60-250 looks just like a tiny dot in the middle of the screen and she couldn't surely have seen enough to throw comments like that lol, one starts immediately wondering why is she acting so falsely. lol. I purposely didnt show her how to enlarge the images, just left her fiddling with the forward cursor lol.

But truth is I am annoyed with the woman. I am almost certain it was her. I want to talk to her next time I run into her, and most probably I will be with my kids as they love the train there and that's where they spend their summer days. I will think over this and find a way of politely approaching her and apologising to her firstly in case I am totally wrong, and even if she turns out to be the one who called I will have a polite chat with her. I am usually pretty good at situations like this. Nothing gives me more pleasure than making someone see sense using the power of expression.

You just pointed out the reason why I was constantly stopped at the airport lol.

In the nineties I used to travel frequently to Portugal, almost every couple of months, and the procedure there everytime I checked in was: After handing over my passport I would check in my luggage but not allowed to proceed. The staff at the check in would politely ask me to step aside and wait while he or she would send my passport, ticket, any extra documents that I would be asked just to prove that I resided in the UK, send it all to be photocopied. All this time I would be standing to the side while more passengers were checked in and allowed to proceed. When I asked them why they did this just for me they said they had clear instructions from the UK to take photocopies of all relevant documents to all non-white EEC citizens who would be boarding the plane. This was because of illegal immigrants. The portuguese officers told me that if they didn't follow these procedures and in the event of an illegal immigrant being found while at the UK borders and they found that portuguese officials hadn't done all these then they would be fined £3K for each person caught. So they were covering their backs by doing this in a sweeping manner. So procedure was, in comes a non-white EEC citizen heading to UK then put him aside and take photocopies of documents, irrelevant of whoever he is. LOL, what a joke.

Irony on all this? The friends who I used to visit in Portugal were all British embassy staff.

This is what I was trying to snap when I was stopped right in the middle of it.
Shame because those woods which are just couple of hundred yards from my place is just like the extension of my garden.

One of the cops rightly told me when I asked whether he didn't think the peson who called didn't go too far and he said probably it must be his or her first time in here and found this strange.

Well, at least I got couple of these ones, but I was heading towards more and the woods are absolutely full of wildlife.
Seems that its going to be just running for me there, I do not want to encounter a situation like this again because I might end up having a different attitude. I know this because I have been through situation that I kept on being pestered at the airport constantly and then one day decided that even though I was going to end up stranded for hours but I had had enough of just making life easy for them too.

You got it wrong there, absolutely wrong. You call this a rant? Goodness me, now this is upsetting.

The more I think about this the more I am convinced that it was the lady I saw who called the cops. And I am bound to run into her again, and guess where it will be? In the woods haa. Obviously she walks her dogs there, so she must frequent those woods often. I rarely go there to photograph although I have been there occasionally, and I have seen many others in there taking images of wildlife. I go there twice a week running, but certainly she wouldn't have recognised me with my running gear as I look pretty odd with the tight pants and all geared up the way I run, with a camelbak on my back for water and the ipod and gadget stuff I carry along just to motivate me to run, because without it all I dont think I could manage a mile let alone 10 . (the things one does to try to run lol).