Back to the birds

We arrived home last night and this morning had a new bird on our pond to welcome us home.

It's a northern pintail and I don't think he's been to Birdland before.


My photo isn't very clear I'm afraid as he was a long way away and I didn't want to go outside and disturb him. But you can clearly see his blue bill! What a handsome fellow.

Here are a couple of good photos so you can see what a pintail looks like:

I don't think Harold was impressed. Here were are, back after two weeks and spending our first breakfast looking through binoculars at a bird outside, instead of him! But no - we are happy to see Harold too - and he's been singing a lot since we got home.

Time for me to head off and sing now....

Duncan and Dippy Duck sightings!

It was a lovely day today. The sun was shining and it was quite warm so we decided to go for a walk around the nearby lake and take a little picnic lunch with us.


As we were walking, lots of ducks came onto the pond and they were so busy with all their goings on. Most of them spent a lot of time splashing around and getting the water in all those little places that needed freshening up. It was really quite loud. And there was one very vocal duck....and they kept swimming one way, and then another.... There were over 100 of them - all mallards. We enjoyed eating out lunch and watching and listening to them all.

And right in the middle of them ( you probably can't see in the first photo), was Duncan Duck :


and Dippy Duck!:


They were quieter than the others and didn't splash around as much! But it was nice to see them all hanging out together!