Osprey #86

A change of plan this morning saw us take a quick day trip to North Wales to see if we could catch up with the Osprey that has been fishing at The Spinnies for the past 3 days. When we arrived mid-morning the car park was almost full, so we knew it was going to be busy and when we met someone on the way to the Sea hide who said it had been sat up in a tree for the past 45 minutes, but had flown off 5 minutes ago, I thought we were going to be disappointed. We waited for a little while in sight of said tree, (about 15 minutes, as we are so impatient) but then decided to head to the estuary to see what the high tide had brought in, passing the very busy sea hide in the process - definitely no room in there anyway.  Whilst we were watching nearly 100 Mute Swans effortlessly glide into view, I saw a large bird in the sky out of the corner of my eye and sure enough it was the Osprey. Hurrah! 
We watched it for about 5 minutes with me firing off a ton of shots and still not being happy as it wasn't close enough, but at least we saw it and it was majestic - a juvenile apparently, but there is a big debate about the sex at the moment. 
I'll put another shot in extras and one of the 50+ egrets(!) that were agitated when the osprey put in an appearance. 

We were home in time for hubby to go to games club after a nice late lunch in Llandudno. 

For those curious about how I got on at camera club last night - it was "interesting"...... about 20 middle aged/older men and one other female, who I predictably sat next to.  Lots of discussion about the direction of the club, the upcoming programme, DPI competitions and even the Christmas quiz and meal!  Next time it will be a speaker on the subject of SPORT, so that could prove interesting. There were a couple of guys who seemed more than happy to help with just about anything, so I will give it a try for a couple more weeks at least to see how it goes. I'll probably end up doing this year to start with and then we will see. Seems like most clubs/organisations where a handful of people do all the work/organising and everybody else just has a bit of a moan!!!  ;)