Monday 11 February 2013

Bongo Bird

Having missed the spoonbill on the Lune estuary last summer, I was rather thrilled to hear that Pete Crooks had found one yesterday on Colloway Marsh.
Of course Colloway is on the other side of the river but as far as I'm concerned if one can see a bird from the Aldcliffe area, then it counts as a patch bird.
And so it was that I headed along the cycle track this morning in pursuit of the big white 'bongo bird'. I'd bumped into Ray Hobbs at the parking area, he wasn't aware of the spoonbill's discovery and he joined me in searching for it.

Spoonbill. No, really.
A 'scope along the marsh north of the pylons failed to locate anything other than a few little egrets, and so we continued down to the horse paddocks at Low Wood. 
'Scanning over the marsh on the opposite bank I soon found the spoonbill just south of the pylons, loosely keeping company with at least 5 egrets. It was quite active, wing-stretching and preening.
Through bins it was just another distant white blob and a 'scope was a definite necessity from this side of the river.
As you can see from the amazing photograph (almost as definitive as those infamous images of the Cottingley Fairies) the bird was some way away...
Anyway, it was an Aldcliffe tick for both Ray and I, so that's all that really matters!
 
Jon

1 comment:

Ernest said...

The truth is, those Cottingley girls got shit scared when they found out that their fairies were going to be media-zapped so they deliberately made some fake ones with Sawdust and Diamonds and fooled everyone into thinking that their fairies were fakes. They were pretty amazed that the fakes were taken as the real thing.... you just can't underestimate the ignorance of media folk can you? Sucking Prawns out of natural bogs, it lives liminally.