Rock Pipit

This was a little galling. I have been checking the north shore of Gunwade Lake for Rock Pipit all this week without any joy but this morning had to drop the car off at the garage so wasn't there. So the call from Mike to say he'd found one was intensely annoying. In the end I managed to rush home and bike there in the evening with just enough light to rattle off a few shots, one of which was just about passable.

This is getting to be a habit, twitching Mike's birds. Hopefully the rightful order will soon be restored and he can get back to twitching mine... ;)

145 Rock Pipit

Scandinavian Rock Pipit Anthus petrosus littoralis

Canon Powershot SX10

Scaup

Yesterday Mike found another Scaup at Ferry Meadows with a party of Tufted Duck. There had been one here back in January but this was before the cycling madness had taken hold so I was keen to see this one. There was no sign yesterday when I passed through at 17:30 and I could only find a couple of Tufties then, so it was a relief to hear from Matt that they were all back in the late evening. This morning it was showing well on the east side of Overton Lake.

144 Scaup

Scaup Aythya marila, female

Digiscoped with Canon Powershot A640 and Leica APO77 x20

Gannet

What an astonishing stroke of luck! Chris Park had just texted me to say he had a juvenile Gannet flying over Ferry Meadows so I thought I'll take a look out of my office window to see if anything was passing and there was a 3rd calendar year Gannet flying straight towards me heading down Broadway towards Peterborough town centre! I quickly grabbed the compact camera and started firing away more in hope than anything else and this is the result. I hope the bird doesn't suffer too much from the wire it seems to have got entangled with.

143 Gannet

Gannet Morus bassanus, 3rd cal year

Canon Powershot A2100 IS