We took our usual Saturday walk round the wetlands this morning. The weather was fine, sunny but quite breezy. I was surprised that there were very few birds in the air. This includes gulls and crows.
Right from the beginning of Perry Lane there were the calls of Chiffchaff. We did see them and hear their hoeet calls the previous week but today there were a few singing birds. Picture from just after the wood.
As I was photographing this, Sandra went up to the platform overlooking the reedbed. In the cutting, presumably made for these birds, she spotted a Water Rail. I had to wait a little while to get a view myself. My camera did its best to focus on every reed stem between me and the bird so I decided to switch to video. Hand held at 50x zoom without breathing I got a reasonable result. (Obviously this is a compressed version and not the same quality as the original). After noticing John's crane video I've uploaded my video to Youtube and linked to there. Uploading directly to this forum means a max file size of 4mb or something quite small.
That view made my morning. Hopefully, next weekend there will be a few Sand Martins flying over too.;
Very nice.
Unicum arbustum haud alit duos erithacos
(One bush does not shelter two Robins)
Zenodotus (3rd Century B.C.)
Nice picture Colin, we go to that platform every time and haven't seen the Water Rail. Heard it very often in that area or as you walk through the copse.
Wow, great clip of the Water Rail Colin, I haven't seen one since they dropped the water by the little pontoon last year. Saw my first Chiffchaff Saturday as well - possibly the same one!