Having enjoyed a great day today, lovely weather, great birds and great photos………. my football team won 5 nil, well it doesn’t get better!. Rather than sit slobbing around after tea, I went to my Kingfisher hide just to see if she was about. Yes she was, and she turned up on to her perch just as it was getting dark. I had set up the flash, just in case, and I took a couple of nice photos of her. She is looking well and and I was glad to see her, exactly 364 days since I discovered kingfishers on the brook last September.
This morning I took some really great photos of Black-tailed Godwits. The Godwits we have here in Devon are a sub-species of the Iclandic race and a re mor colourful than those that occur in the East of the country. They are very attractive and also not in the least bit worried about humans as long as you don’t get too close. This is because on their breeding grounds in the Faroe Islands and Iceland they don’t have any contact with humans at all so when they arrive here in Devon the are seeing people for the first time in the lives perhaps. There has been a lot of study about the migration of this species and it has been discovered that pairs mate for life but do not necessarily spend the winter together. There are examples of pairs where one mate spends the winter in Devon and his mate winters in Spain but they both arrive back in Icelend within hours of each other to meet up again, and then breed. Amazing! I love this species.