Going away for a month (I like to out-do everyone)

Well I arrived safe and sound, and the very first day took tons of pictures of birds, then something awful happened. Somehow my 70X300 zoom got damaged and now it won't work. I had it looked at, and was told that it had to go back to Canon. I can only imagine that something was wrong with it to begin with, as I have treated it so carefully. My friend has lent me her old 70 x 300, it doesn't have an image stabilizer, but it certainly is better than nothing.

Other than the zoom disaster, I'm having a blast, and guess what? It's raining!