Saturday. After a naughty breakfast, we start at Parkgate. As we stare out at the marshes up pops a white head, and then another... Not the spoonbill we'd been hoping for, but equally delightful - Great White Egrets - Parkgate regulars, but rather scarce away from the area. Later we were treated to a very close fly-by from a Little Egret. It landed near-by, on display. As I lifted the camera, it stepped forward ... and disappeared !! How can a bright white bird disappear? The marshes are full of ditches, and once a bird has stepped down into one, it's as good as invisible...
A quick dash for an equally naughty lunch (poached eggs - mmmmm), and it was off to Marbury for a walk with the Friends of Northwich Woods... An interesting walk, with all sorts of titbits for future reference. Finished at the hide near the reed-bed, and more views of the Bittern.
Honest - it is in there! The camouflage markings are so good, it is really hard to see until it moves. Thankfully, just as the light starts to go, it emerges from hiding to have a stretch and a scratch...
See - told you there was a bittern there!
And then a strange thing - a Grey Heron pops it's head up in another part of the reed-bed, and then lumberingly flaps across to the Bittern, and lands close by. It stayed there for a good five minutes before heading off again...
So what was all about? A birder present said that it wasn't the first time that a Heron had done that - it was almost as if it was trying to show the presence of the Bittern - but why? Answers on a postcode please!
Sunday - the other half had a preaching engagement, so time for a flying visit only... Where to go? It had to be a flying visit to a sewage farm!! Plenty of noise from the hedgerows as the birds were waking up, but it was left to this greenfinch to test out the sunlight.
Meanwhile, in the works themselves, we saw this indistrious little pied wagtail, hard at working darting between the rotating booms.
Perhaps not the most romantic of locations, but one that hold promise for a future (longer) visit.
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