Willington

The drake Ring-necked Duck at Octagon Farm, Willington, is a cracker and showed nicely this evening.

Sadly, I could only muster a poor attempt at a bad record shot (see left). Shortly after we arrived it began feeding (must be a hungry migrant), then went to sleep - as ducks do...

After chatting to Steve 'Jungle Boy' Blain for a while, we dropped in at Willington gravel pits. I was a little surprised to find this female Grey Wagtail feeding a newly-fledged juvenile.


It gives me great displeasure to say that the best photos I took all evening were handheld shots of captive birds at a collection in Willington - through a chainlink fence. But just look at these rare beauties!

Male Lady Amherst's Pheasant x Golden Pheasant

Mandarins (the most numerous species by far)

Other species at this private site included Red-breasted Goose, Golden Pheasant, Eider, Smew, Goldeneye, Ruddy Shelduck, Bahama Pintail, Greylag Goose and, er, Indian Junglefowl.

digiscoped photos taken with Nikon Coolpix 995 + Leica Apo Televid 77 with 20x eyepiece

Crrr crrr, zzze zzze, ack ack...

Ah, the sweet, sweet sound of Great Reed Warbler song...

After work this evening, I did a bit of twitching. It wasn't too far away, so I went to see the Great Reed at Willington gravel pits near Bedford. I heard it before I saw it. It's been a couple of years since I last heard one, but it definitely brought to mind a faulty dot-matrix printer.

Conditions weren't really ideal, being quite breezy and distinctly cold, but eventually it climbed up a swaying reed stem and sat out in the open to sing.

We [a small gathering of twitchers] were viewing from across the other side of the reed-fringed pit where the Great Reed had taken up residence, but after a bit of singing, it flew across to our side (and out of view). Lars Jonsson was about right when he said they were the "size of a small thrush!" Our 'normal' Reed Warbler measures about 13cm from bill to tail, but Great Reed Warbler is more like 19cm. What a whopper!

Steve Blain has a photo of this bird on Birdguides.com

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On another note, I've had (at the last count) 165 hits on my blog today (including one from the United States House of Representatives!) and three comments this evening! Welcome to you all. That's almost three times the total of yesterday's hits, and there are still 40 minutes to go.

Will somebody please tell me what's going on?

Wait a moment...

Ah... the source is the Blogger homepage! That's pretty cool... I'm shocked!