Strangers in the Night - Francis Albert

Working on the theory that persistance will reap rewards our usual 30 minute vigil on the doorstep, long before dawn, produced a real cracker but on song / call only. The seemingly lone 'fly-by'

WHIMBREL
was only our second record here in 14 years but the first did involve this

TRIO

back as far as 2014.
With only the lightest of rain on the breeze our good foretune continued as visiting the
Moth Traps

we found 2 additions to the Year List by way of this

SATELLITE

along with

LEAD-COLOURED DRAB
Otherwise, as soon as you make a statement, previous post, such as

"while other Mute Swans in the county have been recorded laying eggs ours seem to be out of touch as yet" then the following morning there they were

Getting Together

Gathering Nesting Material

and
Forming a Sturdy Base
while all else only amounted to

a noticable increase in the number of

MEADOW PIPITs

in the gloom.
Surely it can only get Better??

Still Struggling but, Not Giving Up

 With both laptops now seriously on their knees who knows how long the Bagsy Blog will survive, but the computer doctor has been summond! Add to that the continuing light rain, that gets you wet in very quick time we can only look on the bright side being a couple or 3 days behind with the posts! Other than that there is only good news as again we teased 2 First for the Year from the Moth Traps:-

including

DOTTED CHESTNUT

along with

TAWNY PINION
neither eyecatching but surely they will arrive in days to come.
Otherwise, it was left to the attendant

Garden Birds

such as

ROOKs
now busily feeding young

and similarly the more local

KESTREL
(yes again)

and another short showing of our own 'small' murmuration of

STARLINGs

Ducks are a-Dabbling Up Tails All

 As the name suggests

SCARCE PROMINENT

is up there on the 'wants list' of most who participate in such things
and when sending the images off to higher authority just to be sure we were not dreaming.
This is in fact the 'second' specimen of this creature we have secured here! Not content with that alone we also caught

EARLY GREY

new for the year.

Again not much of a day for being out there with the return of the rain but the hungry must be fed and with Waterfowl most prominent our attention was drawn to them.

While elsewhere MUTE SWANs have laid eggs between our 2 resident pairs not a stick has been lifted in an attempt to even lay the foundations of a nest.

At the other end of the scale a pair of

LITTLE GREBE
on each of the northern ponds are in the act of noisily displaying while as has been reported before the

EGYPTIAN GEESE
have alread brought off young and there are likely to be more as today's count amounted to 12 adult individuals an the Moors River alone!

While what amounts to a long staying 'pair' GADWALL have never been proven to breed across our area, which also applies to both

SHOVELER

 (male)

(female)

and

TEAL
while a fair bet would be that both

CANADA GEESE
+

GOSLINGs

GREYLAG

GEESE
and surely

MALLARD

Fight the Good Fight with all Thy Might

 Despite the wind having dropped dramatically the day still stated with something of a rumble as this

BOEING GLOBEMASTER C - 17

took to the wing out of
Bournemouth International Airport

but not so much luck from the Traps as not a single 'Insect' across the 3 let alone a 'Moth', but every

Cloud has a Silver Lining and then, before we knew it,

we found ourself

in the midst of

a major

Cock Fight

and to the 'Victor' go the 'Spoils'
while a trio of

BLACK-HEADED GULLS
took little of our attention before being beckoned by one of the Equestrian Ladies

pointing out that for a 3rd time in recent years a pair of

WRENs

had commandeered part of her horse food rack

as a nest site.