A mission to Minsmere

I received a text from Terry mid week saying he was on orange alert for a mission to Suffolk for a day out and to try and catch up with a Collared Pranticole, if it stayed a round. Friday afternoon the mission details came through as follows; Departing from Andy's place at 5.30am, Jason will pick you up on the way through at 5.15am (Jason was going to be up at 5.15am?!). Sure enough at ten past five the badger mobile arrived, where he took great pleasure in telling me that he was 3 minutes early! The kit was quickly loaded into Terry's car and the three hour journey to Minsmere soon passed. On arrival in the car park, one of the RSPB wardens shouted across the car park to us that the Collared Praticole was showing well from the east hide. We quickly made our way to the hide and soon found the Praticole sat on one of the islands. Although the view was very distant we had good scope views, the hide soon became very busy so we left to have a look around the rest of the reserve. By mid afternoon the temperatures were so hot we decided to return home.

  

  

© Andy last

  

  

Painted lady

  

© Andy last 

  

Captions in the comments box please 

       

Sunday morning I decided to have a walk round the local RSPB reserve while doing  exactly that I had a text from badger to say there was two Black necked grebes had  turned up on Farmoor . well it would be rude not to go and see them after they made the effort to drop in on us     

Black necked grebe 

Have a good week