Today's star turn was a female Long – tailed Duck, this time at Dawlish. Like buses, you wait for one and then two come along together. When I got up it was very bright and sunny with a heavy frost but the forecast was for an overcast day. You could see a very low blanket of cloud hanging over the distant East Devon Moors (I can see them from my house by the way). I thought I should get on my way quickly to make use of the available light. I decided to go to Dawlish for the female Long – tailed Duck because I had read that it was feeding quite close to shore. By the time I had parked my car and started to walk along the seafront the cloud had caught up and then after a few minutes we were blanketed in cloud. The duck was visible and I started, almost immediately, to photograph it. It was feeding constantly, diving and staying under the water for a minute or so at a time. It was quite hard to predict where it would emerge on the surface but each time it did , it was a race to photograph it before it dived again. On one occasion it appeared with a large prawn in its beak and it it was a great photo opportunity.   When I looked through my photos later I could see that it was quite successful and had caught quite a few  largish prawns.  Have a look at my blog entry for photos of the   Male Long – tailed Duck that I saw and photographed  last Wednesday on the 20th on the main pool at Bowling Green Marsh.  It will be good to compare the two birds.