Yet Another Away Day - Part I

 A single line from the first track of Peter Gabriel’s first and eponymous ‘solo’ album, “Moribund the Burgermeister” seemed to fit perfectly to describe our adventure to the Somerset Levels

This thing's outrageous, I tell you on the LEVEL it's really so ‘contagious’ must be the work of the devil!

At 05:10 and not even having reached the main road yet a ‘first for the year”

BARN OWL

with a lesser mortal maybe thinking we had used up all our good luck before even leaving the Sprinting Blocks, we were certainly going to need some later if the dream was to become true!
Meeting Dave Foot at Dorchester 45 minutes later we reached

just as the

Upper Limb of the Sun kissed the horizon, but best of all not as single vehicle in the
Car Park as given the 'rarity' of the target bird of the day we had expected an early morning mob!

All the 'usuals' were in attendance with clouds already swirling across an open sky including

WIGEON

SHOVELER (female)

ditto male

hundreds of

GOLDEN PLOVER

and

Mixed Waterfowl

each trying to avoid becoming breakfast for the occasional passing

MARSH HARRIER

By this time we had been joined by anouther gentleman who had hardly attached his teliscope to the tripod before announcing "there it is" with brief directions which Dave followed diligently while it took me some time, not unusual, to gain a first glimps of a rather sleepy and

EXTREMELY RARE

BAIKAL TEAL
(dead centre of the image second duck back)

zoom in to give a slightly better idea

but did perform quite well

for just a few minutes,

but nowhere long enough and while not wishing to appear blasé having seen thousands of these smart little ducks, particularly across 3 visits to South Korea, it was never in a wildest dream

considered a contender for our Graet Britain List with the total national sightings being only around the 20 mark ever?

Just to emphasis the point we have borrowed an image for clarity and will endeavour to get part 2 published in the very near future!