Black Tail

An extraordinarily rare sighting and high on my list of things to see and to add to the BlipBigYear, the Black-tailed godwit.

They were out in the Severn estuary over half a mile away but the scopes in the hide had picked this flock of 30 out!! No...I didn't count them personally but others did ( I am still in denial that I am a fully fledged twitcher!!)Binoculars were good here but with my lens at full stretch I did manage to get a picture of the distant birds.

It has fairly long legs for wading and a long straight beak for catching shellfish, snails, beetles and dragonflies amongst other things. It is plain brown/grey on it's upperparts with, unsurprisingly, a black tail :)

They were gone as breeding birds in the 19th century having been netted and served up as a delicacy with the remaining birds being driven away with the draining of the fens. today because of protection since 1952 they have become established in East Anglia and have nested in other parts of Britain including Orkney. It's future is promising with it having become a frequent passage migrant and winter visitor from north Europe and Russia but still a very rare species.

Bearing all that in mind it really had to be blipped while it was around and because it is so very special!!

Not to be confused with the ducks in the foreground :))