Tuneful

I misread one of my bird alerts this morning, and thought that the wintering Black-throated and Great Northern Divers at Draycote Water had left Biggin Bay, where they've been hanging out for several weeks, and moved over towards the southern banks where they would be much easier to see and photograph. By the time a forcefully opinionated birder with a large scope whom I met on Farborough Bank had put me right - "You'll never get them with that lens!" he scoffed, without even bothering to ask what lens I was using - it was too late for me to reroute in search of Short-eared Owls or Waxwings, so I made the best of it and hiked off around the reservoir.

A much more helpful chap gave me very precise directions to where I could expect to see the Black-throated and at least one of the Great Northern Divers, and his information turned out to be absolutely accurate (may blessings shower upon him). He further predicted that at least a couple of the birds would be close enough for photos, which was also correct, and told me that the GND count has suddenly gone up to five birds, a gathering that suggests they may be getting ready to set off homewards. 

My second photo tonight is the Black-throated Diver - it's the bird I went for, after all, so it would be silly not to post it, even though it's a distant and heavily-cropped shot. It's readily distinguishable from the Great Northern Diver by its white flank patch, and the fact that its black and white head markings are neater and more defined. Other distinguishing features are detailed in this Bird Guides article, should you need or care to know how to tell wintering Divers apart. This is only the second Black-throated Diver I've ever seen; the first, four years ago in a park in Redditch, gave me much closer views than this one, but also cost me a fractured vertebra - so I'm calling swings and roundabouts on today's bird.

Sadly by the time I'd bagged the Divers I was well on schedule to overrun my parking, and as I wasn't sure what the penalty for that might be I decided not to go after the flock of Siskins my helpful informant had also told me about, and set off back towards the car park at a trot. However the Dunnock was singing loudly and beautifully enough on the top of a hedge to stop me in my tracks, and gave me by far the best photo of the day. I confess to having cursed when I saw that I'd taken it at Cormorant-in-flight-over-sunlit-water settings, but I doubt the bill and tongue would have been sharp at a slower shutter speed, and happily the image cleaned up very nicely in Lightroom.