Thursday, April 21, 2005

No White Wags here...








Ferry Meadows Country Park, this evening

Everyone else is photographing White Wagtails (Motacilla alba alba, that is, as opposed to our Pied Wagtail M. a. yarrellii) these days, so I thought I'd be different.


Female Reed Bunting


Male Chaffinch


No subject too distant (not when they're this big, anyway...)


A stretch, then it's time to go feeding again... Common Terns (the left one is ringed).

The good news at the park tonight was that there are now cows on Heron Meadow, so now we'll know where to look for wagtails and pipits.

Talking of wagtails, I dropped in at Tesco on the way home. There's a Pied Wagtail roost there and birds congregate in the car-park before taking their places in small trees for the night (I counted more than 60 birds there last week).

As I made my way over to the centre, something caught my eye. In the shadow of a BMW, a love story was being played out.

He
was singing furiously.
She
stood still.
He
spread both his wings, almost like a wader doing a broken-wing display, stretched, bill thrust forward, shimmying towards her, being seductive.
She lunged towards him, her bill thrust forward, rebutting him. Go away.
He
retreated, in fear of receiving a peck.

The process was repeated two or three times until he obviously got bored with receiving the same response and flew off. I continued my journey towards Tesco, realising that someone had been staring at me staring at the wagtails. They probably thought I was going to nick the BMW's hubcaps...

photos taken with Nikon Coolpix 995 + Leica Apo Televid 62 with 16x eyepiece

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