Away Day Part III

 With continuing failing memory, those of the same vintage will know only to well, there was a brief encounter with a passing

RED KITE
before arriving at

with a jauty welcome from the Warden and

our first batch of

CATKINs
for the year, and where there was some repetition of Bird species but mostly with far better views such as

PINTAIL

feeding with Wigeon in the foreground

and at much

Closer Quarters

The

almost

mandatory

MARSH HARRIER

Along the dyke the 'squeals' of an unseen

WATER RAIL

almost blanked out by what is believed to be the

DEVON AIR AMBULANCE

before reaching my own finest hour. Thus far Dave had spotted or heard everything 'first', "no point in having a Gilly and doing all the work yourself " as alerting me to a 'booming' (their song)

BITTERN

(these 2 'stills' from the archive for clarity)

but it was me, me, me

who first spotted it

In Flight

Every Duffer has His Day!

From the same vantage point close to the

WATER MILL

stunning views of

GREAT WHITE EGRET

almost bringing our ditty

to an end but not before making mention of all the lovely people we met en-route.

Goodbye to Glastonbury Tor and the company of King Arthur and Guinevre, the Nature Reserves and the Wildlife, but again more particularly the Beautiful People!

Away Day - Part II

 On leaving Grey Lake a somewhat better view of

COMMON SNIPE

with a welcome but brief

bonus appearance of a

CETTI'S WARBLER
neither of which, although reasonably common, have not yet graced home turf.
En-Route to

this

COMMON BUZZARD

was considered worthy of a

Click 'n' a Clip
before the 'high jinx' started while scanning this

Field of Sheep 

and spotting one in distress unable to get back on its trotters so step foreward

His Dave-ship, with much farming experience in his youth, to right the matter knowing personally if I saw him bearing down on me I'd be up and off like a shot!
From the same spot we got our first sighting of

GLASTONBURY TOR
steeped in Arthorian myth and legend and thought we might pop over and have a cuppa with he, Guinevere and his old dad Uther Pendragon later?
The next encounter was with c3

CATTLE EGRET

stoping just briefly

to

capture them but

completely upstage just 10 minutes later as looking into this farmyard

to find another posing with a

BOVINE
Finally, for this leg of the visit at least, another 'targeted' semi-rarity in the form of a

BEAN GOOSE

at great distance which looked fine through a telescope

but not to clever otherwise but maybe these 2 from the archive

might help?

With Part III hopefully with you sooner rather than later?
THANKS for TUNING IN

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!