18 September 2011

Grey Phalarope at West Usk Lighthouse

You know when there is a flipping easy to photograph bird down the road and you end up laying in mud, cow shit and rubbish for hours in the rain because you can't think of anything better to do? Yeah, that...

I suppose the colour on the sides of the neck would be best described as 'chamois', or maybe 'misty buff'.

Please note the rather large rain drops.

If you look carefully at the reflection in the bird's eye, you can just make out a bedraggled, mud-spattered, prostrate, semi-aquatic lifeform,... that's me that is.

I was having a nice cup of tea when Nathan found this, alas, it remained unfinished,...

... on the plus side, for those of us on Twitter at least, the arrival of this bird did lead to us learning that the County Recorder can't spell 'bugger'.

And then it came much too close to focus on,... which was nice. It fed, pretty much, the whole time I was present, did the anti-predator crouchy-thing on three occasions (in response to Kestrel, Buzzard and [maybe] Woodpigeon?!) and called twice.

Whilst I was fannying around a Little Stint dropped in, before instantly deciding to try somewhere else; amongst the roost at high tide were two or three Curlew Sandpipers and a Sanderling; three or four Wheatear dotted about along the sea wall; and overhead passage included Redpoll, Skylark, Mipit and hirundines.

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