There are always things that I enjoy on my excursions to the lakes: a vista with a background of trees in a huge variety of greens to a shot that I think will make a really good photograph, a bird in flight or a ray of sunshine breaking through the trees or across the lake.
My walk this week included all of these and lots of opportunities to watch and photograph two long- necked birds - cormorants and grebes accompanied by their rapidly growing grebettes.
When in flight, cormorants remind me of stealth bombers, maybe because they often fly low over the water like all good spy planes do in the movies, or it might just be because they are so sleek and black.
Cormorants adopt two other classic poses they are what I call 'the lookout' and 'the crucifix'. The 'lookout' is pretty self-evident, while the crucifix is the position they take up, with wings out-stretched and drying.
Grebes seem to have been plentiful this year and I have enjoyed watching them pair off, go through their mating rituals and have their zebra-necked young - the grebettes which have a cute way of sitting on their parents’ backs when very small.
I was coming to the end of my meandering when suddenly there was a reed warbler; a really elusive bird that I have heard on many of my recent walks but haven’t seen to photograph. Here was my opportunity and I duly snapped away. A good finish to my walk.
Then as I was making my way back towards the car park, there sitting on top on a telegraph pole was a bird. At first, I wondered if it was just another pigeon but wasn’t sure. A couple of steps closer and I realised that it was in fact a bird of prey – a red kite to be precise. I have seen them many times flying but hadn’t seen one just sitting on a pole so I took a couple of photographs before it took flight and gracefully departed into the distance.
It made me realise that there appears to be a strange phenomenon on many of my trips – the last minute flourish, the grand finale. It will be something unusual, spectacular or just something I haven’t seen before but it always happens in the last 5 or 10 minutes.
I have no idea why this happens and there seems to be no logical reason for it, but it has occurred on so many occasions that it is clearly a ‘thing’ for me...
and long may it continue.
Footnote: It's only as I'm posting this that I realise just how many 'long-necked' birds I could have featured - the proverbially graceful mute swan, the raucous Canada geese and those 'old men' the grey herons, just to mention a few
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