Two for the price of One

This afternoon (01/11/14) my son and I went over to Blashford lakes to see what was about as my son wanted to see if any new ducks had arrived for the winter. We parked at the Tern hide but found the hide quite rammed I expect veryone  was looking for the Franklins Gull?
So we decided to take a walk along the Dockens stream path and the cross the road and head towards the Lapwing hide.

The Dockens Water

As we walked along the path I was hoping to connect with a Firecrest but no luck with those though I thought I did here one. We crossed the road and on to the next path way were I found a Treecreeper working its way up a tree, then my son (Dan) says there is a Nuthatch as well on the next tree. Then a mixed tit flock appeared mostly Great Tits with some Blue Tits another Treecreeper and a Goldcrest.

After watching these for a little while as they worked there way through the trees we final made our way to the Lapwing hide.

At the this hide and this time of afternoon the bright light was toward us so this made scanning across the water difficult looking towards the Tern hide. Though not to bad directly in front of us and around the little point, here we found some Little Grebes a Great Crested Grebe some Wigeon lots of Coots and on the large grass bank to the left of the hide 24 Egyptian Geese, also lots of gulls fly about and no doubt a Franklin's among the somewhere. Then Dan says what are those two bird sitting in the grass at the edge of the water. He points me in the right  and I find the bird excatly were hes says I have a good look through the binoculars and tell him they are Snipe at this point I get the Collins Guide out and let Dan find the bird and confirm what we were looking at which he did very well.

Record shot of two Snipe Isbly water

As it was getting late in the afternoon and we had to get back for tea we made our way back along the path always listerning and watching for birds when I spotted a blue flash dart across one of the small lakes. I said to Dan as we make our way round we just might see a Kingfisher and sure enough as we got round the other side there perched low by the water there was the Kingfisher but just as I moved the camera up to my eye to get a shot it darted off again.

Some type of fungi along the Dockens stream path