Pennington Flash

A quiet afternoon stroll round Pennington Flash while the weather's behaving itself nicely.

Mute swans

The water was still high in the Flash, looking out from the Horrocks Hide a good part of the spit was underwater. This was fine for the mallards and black-headed gulls but the half a dozen lapwings that had decided to stick around didn't look too impressed by it. The cormorants that usually hang around at the end of the spit were a lot closer than usual.

Grey heron and cormorants

Black-headed gull

Most of the tufted duck were out on the open water, there were a few pairs of gadwall from the Edmondson Hide and rather more from the Ramsdale Hide with plenty of teal. A couple of pairs of shoveler lurked in the background.

Coming out of Ramsdales Hide my first four redwings of Winter were feeding in the hawthorn bush on the corner. Summer wasn't entirely over, though, as a minute later a hawker dragonfly flew over the same bush.

Redwing

There was a lot of activity on the feeders by the Bunting Hide with one of the willow tits showing well hopping in and out of the hollow logs immediately in front of the hide. Sadly, too close and too gloomy for any of my attempts at getting a photo to be any good.