Bird of the day

Another beautiful frosty morning, probably the last of this particular cold spell, but I had to attend an early meeting in a local village hall. It was almost painful to have to drive through the dazzling countryside without taking any photographs, but sometimes that's life! The meeting lasted four hours but it was with a lovely set of people, and by the end I felt we'd made real progress in developing a survey and monitoring strategy for the Langdyke nature reserves.

After a late lunch I felt a longish walk was needed before setting off for another evening meeting. As my time was limited, I headed to Ferry Meadows not really expecting to photograph anything very exciting. As I crossed one of the bridges, the male Kingfisher (see extra) landed on a nearby branch and was soon followed by his mate (she has the red lipstick!). I couldn't stop for long, but saw both of them catch a fish and fly downstream to eat it in the shelter of the riverside scrub. A little further on I finally caught up with a flock of Lesser Redpoll feasting on Silver Birch seeds.

Over forty people turned out for the evening meeting, with representatives form nearly all the parishes in the John Clare Countryside area. The funded part of the project is coming to a close but there is clearly a lot of goodwill from parish councils and supporting organisations such to keep up the good work achieved so far.