Far Ings Reserve Humberside - Bittern and Friends

It is not often you go to a reserve hoping to see a target species but, yesterday, we were lucky and within a short while of arriving at Far Ings everyone in the Nature Group party had photographed a Bittern as it walked across the reed bed. Otherwise the reserve was fairly quiet but there was enough around to keep my camera happy. 

Paxton Pits Afternoon walk

Yesterday morning was too wet to do outside work at Paxton Pits so we were undercover putting nest boxes together. In the afternoon, the rain stopped and clouds cleared to give beautiful light for a walk around the reserve. There are hundreds of Gadwall and Widgeon on the Lakes at the moment together with resident Cormorants, Swans and Gulls which provided plenty of activity to photograph. The flies are still active with three species of hoverfly in one small patch together with a Sarcophagid fly on a toadstool.

Feeding Strategies at Lackford Lakes

 Food is obviously at a premium over the winter months. Gadwalls appear to be a gentle non-aggressive duck but they spend their time with coots eating what they bring up from the bottom and occasionally steal food directly from the coots – a behaviour known as kleptoparasitism. At the feeding station, the robin attacked anything that came at all close to feeding area - the tits managed to get some seed by flitting in very fast while the larger sized blackbirds risked the aggression. The low light levels meant I was shooting between 2000 and 12800 ISO so not great quality.

Paxton Pits Birds

 While the numbers of birds and species on the water at Paxton Pits yesterday were impressive, the song birds were almost entirely absent during our Third Thursday public walk with the only sightings being a flock of blue tits and long-tailed tits and a friendly but not very healthy-looking robin. We watched several very confiding young Grey Herons, one with a damaged bill, around 30 Little Egrets, a Great White Egret, numerous Cormorants, Gadwall and Black-headed Gulls, Wigeon, Great Crested Grebe, Lapwing and Kingfisher. White balance control was made quite difficult by the very reflective green algae in the shallow water and the overcast conditions .

RPS Nature Group Outing to Paxton

We had to cancel the arranged date for our trip to Paxton due to the extreme heat warning so yesterday was one of the two replacement dates and we hit lucky with the weather and the birds but not so successful with the insects, which are in very short supply along with (and caused by?) lack of their prey. This Egret gave us a good display landing so close it doesn't allow a Facebook format crop. The highlight was watching hundred or more cormorants fly in to feed on what must have been a fish swarm and also the confiding Snipe. There were also large numbers of Gadwall just about out of eclipse.