Quick Tick

There seemed to be a Smew invasion a few days ago. Andy asked me if I wanted to go for a walk round Hoveringham to see if any had landed there but I was busy.  Two hours later the report came in ... Smew at Hoveringham. 

It was freezing cold but we were wrapped up warm.  First tick was this Ruff ... poor photo but I just had my Lumix 10.  Andy did a better job on this Little Egret.

The Egret numbers are increasing there: we have seen eight together but a regular birder said he had counted twenty-eight.  Last year he was convinced they were going to breed in a small copse but it didn't happen ... maybe this year....

There was a sighting of a Great White Egret nearby.  It frequented this area last year so it didn't come as a surprised.

We found a Grey Plover looking sick and very sorry for itself.  There were four Dunlin and the Smew we had gone down there to find.

The main talking point was a Goosander that had been mistaken for a Red Breasted Merganser: apparently it was easy to see why but it was too far away for me to identify either way!! 

Last week we were looking at these catkins feeling Spring was here!


AUDUBON'S BIRDS OF AMERICA

This beautiful book was delivered this morning.  No, we didn't win the Lottery so we didn't fork out £7,000,000 (the last sale price of a real copy of Audubon) but the photographs are wonderful. 

The  original Audubons are about 99cm by 66cm - much too big for my coffee table! It was publish between 1827 and 1838 and contained 435 life sized engravings of American birds by John James Audubon.  The cost in 1838 was around (£185).  It was published unbound to avoid the extra cost of issuing free copies to libraries and it is believed about 200 copies were produced. 

We purchased this one from The Folio Society.  It was a special edition for members and has sold out so we were lucky to get it. 


Here are some of the plates: