Bye bye and give us a ring

With the weather starting to look pretty blustery we may have seen the last of our Osprey. I saw it briefly yesterday morning but then no one saw it for the rest of Saturday. Ignoring the clock change we got up before dawn today and wnet down Maple Lodge and gave it about two hours or more but no sign. If I had tyo guess I reckon its half-way to France to now, and good luck with the hurricane forecasted for tonight.
To keep us busy there was the usual selection of ducks and the little grebe, and I tried a few arty shots. I do like the pochard with a very impressionistic background! There was also a lot of jays flying around, two kingfishers chasing each across the lake and a sparrowhawk zooming around till it was chased off by two magpies!!!

 

In the afternoon I nipped out to Wilstone for the juvenile ring-necked duck. Due to total incompetence it took over an hour to get it, needing another birder to put us onto it. Really dull, drab bird but stood out from the others. Good spot if you weren't looking though. Also had red-crested pochard, golden plover, black-tailed godwit and snipe. There was a very good number of teal, I would estimate in the hundreds. Slowly building the year-list, up to 212 on BOU or 214 on 400club rules, still way behind last year!!!