The Longham Patch February 24th

The Angel of Longham Lakes

Great White Egret posing as an Angel

Friday afternoons at Longham Lakes seem to becoming a reguarly feature for me on the way home from work. Though the birding is good it is increasingly becoming hard to find new and intersting birds and one bird is proofing difficult for me to spot, and that is the Bullfinch I know they are there and the area they seem to favour but the are never about when I am.
I walked all way round North Lake pay particual attion to the thickets round the smaller of the two lakes.But no Bullfinches showed them selfs only Goldfinch, Blue and Great Tits and in the horse paddocks 26 Pied Wagtails.
Arriving at the west side of the lakes I spotted one of the Great White Egret down the little wooden bridge that goes over a ditch. The bird flew towards the river and dropped down behind a high bank, I scanned the scrub along the the river bank hoping for another sighting of an otter. No signs so I carried on up a long the west side of South lake and scanned across to the island were another GWE was tuck up in the long grass.

I checked all the Tufted Ducks hoping to find a Scuap that might be lurking undiscoverd among them but no such luck. Then I started to check the gulls as I am sure an interesting gull is going to turn up soon,but all I could find was a Mediterrnean Gull and a couple of Lesser Black backed Gulls.

After this I parcticed taking some some picture with the new bridge camera I brought to take out when I go birding as carting an SLR and a  300mm or 400mm lens and telescope can be a bit heavy.

Great White Egret

Drake Mallard

Though I have found that with the electronic view finder it is a lot harder to lock on to a bird especieally little bird like Chiffchaff as I tried to get a picture of one of four birds theat were flitting about after insects on the side of Samual's Wood.