Filming wildlife - the ultimate waiting game

Anyone knows you need a lot of patience to film wildlife: after waiting a quarter of a century to be able to afford the equipment needed to obtain great footage I think I have this quality in spades.
The 1980s was an interesting decade: dodgy music and even more questionable fashion are among some of my recollections. But for me one of the greatest influences was watching the marvellous wildlife footage from the run of Sir David Attenborough natural history programmes which characterised the decade.
Truly inspired by the dramatic and breathtaking images, I was hooked and I knew that I wanted one day to film wildlife. However, I didn't know that I'd have to wait over 25 years to stand a reasonable chance of capturing anything more than distant and fuzzy shots.
The equipment necessary to film wildlife has always been expensive (it still is), but at long last the curves of increasingly affordable kit and a little more disposable income finally met for me this year with the launch of the Canon 550D. Previously, interchangeable lens video cameras were the stuff of dreams, but now - at last - I have the ability to record High Definition footage with affordable kit.
Knowing there must be other frustrated wildlife video enthusiasts in the blogosphere, I'd like to share my tips and failures with like-minded obsessives. I don't pretend to be an expert, but I don't think there are many experts yet. The invention of video-enabled digital single lens reflex (DSLR) cameras is spawning a gold rush of ideas, techniques and new ways of capturing the natural world. Sometimes I hope to strike gold, other times I know I'll be digging dirt, but I will certainly have fun - after all, I've waited long enough.

CAPTURING A NEW WORLD: A still from an HD hoverfly sequence shot in my back garden with a Canon 550D, manual-focus micro Nikkor 105mm lens, a set of extension tubes and an adaptor to allow the fitting of Nikon lenses on a Canon body.