Exciting Springtime Sightings

 Starting with a bit of bad news, I found this dead great tit in the garden last week.  

Great Tit

I sort of assumed that it had crashed into the summerhouse, but on inspection it seemed to have a wound on its upper breast so maybe got nobbled by something.

Yesterday, I went on the first big trip of the year with son and fiancee to Leighton Moss, which provided a sufficient parade of sightings to justify even the £9 entry fee for non-RSPB members.

We saw a good number of marsh harriers flying at considerable height, which surprised me a bit.  On previous occasions in the Netherlands and at Leighton Moss before, I'd been used to seeing them flying low looking for prey.  Often they were in groups of two or more so I supposed that it was some sort of pre-mating routine, disturbed by occasional buzzards.  Anyway, I was delighted to get a photo of one in flight with my pocket camera, even though it wasn't brilliant.

Although we didn't manage to see one, we did hear numerous bitterns booming, which was a first time for me.  I must say 'booming' is a bit of a misnomer.  As one of the signs pointed out, it sounds much more like someone blowing over the top of an old-fashioned glass milk bottle.

Also not seen was the bearded tit.  We hadn't really expected them to show at this time of year although apparently they are still around.

One bird that is present is the ring-necked duck and I thought I might have seen one at distance from the tower.  In fact it proved to be just another tufted duck.

Shortly afterwards, heading for lunch I spotted some small red fungi next to the path.  I think they are called scarlet elf cups.

At the last hide we visited there was a view over several bits of land sticking out into the water, surrounded by various ducks.  A group of twitchers reckoned there was a water pipit working its way along one of them.  Unfortunately, try as we might, we couldn't confirm or deny it as a sighting as the photos we took of the wee bird were all too blurry.  Apparently it had been identified earlier by someone using a powerful telescope, so presumably correctly.

Overall, there were just too many photos to post individually, so I've amalgamated them together in  brief video.  Unfortunately there is no background music as that now costs extra from Microsoft!