from
“The Wind in the
Willows”
All along the backwater,
through the rushes tall,
Ducks are a dabbling,
up tails all!
With overnight temperatures recently having been dropping to Zero degrees
and below, expectations have not been high across the Moth Traps, but
Never say Never!
as both
ANGLE SHADES
and
MARBLED MINOR
have been added to the Year List while another
KNOTGRASS
has been among the Also Rans!
On the Main Pond success seems to have been eluding the pair of
MUTE SWANs
as having abandoned 2 nests with a 3rd havine been destroyed!
Undaunted they sill persevere and at the last count now have a
Fourth Nest with Single Egg
(we will be watching)
While remaining close to home the
SONG THRUSH
appear to have found better fortune
as still feeding a brood somewhere among the garden bushes.
On our way north we once again caught sight of the
GLOBEMASTER
taking off
seemingly in the endless quest to keep us all safe one way or another!
Both the Common and the Heath appeared moribund but returning to base after
Victualling and Bunkering Ship
there was found to be a little good fortune left in the day with
GREEN WOODPECKER
having returned to the garden
and also likely to be feeding young while we were also just lucky enough to catch the
NHS AIRWAYS AIRBUS
in all its splender
noisily awaiting take off.
China or not we don't know!
Finally, while thumbing through the archive for something of interest
(we'll find it before long)
we came across a couple of vids and snaps of a real crowd pleaser from a few years ago down
Portland and Weymouth way.
The
HOODED MERGANSER
is a saw-bill duck of the America's and an extremely rare visitor to
Great Britain,
with this individual, still in juvenile / winter plumage, found waterlogged in a culvert along
Chesil Beach Road, Portland
back in 2008.
I was onboard the Floating Oil Production Platform Buchan Alpha at the time
and embarking on what was described then as my
After Midnight Self Flagulation
I telephoned Birdline to hear of its finding. Turning to the
Portland Bird Observatory Website the following day something similar to the
top picture appeared making it look rather like it wasn't going to last another day,
let alone until I returned home. Luckily for me it did and for several years more but not without
a massive amount of conjecture and doubt about its origins, things that could never be proved conclusively one way or the other.
What was for certain the Ugly Duckling soon turned out to be one of the
'Showiest Wildfowl on the Planet'
Ducks’ tails, drakes’
tails, yellow feet a-quiver,
Yellow bills all out
of sight, busy in the river!
