Spoonbill

 For a couple of days this week, this was the view over Bridge Marsh...

Big white horizontal blob with a long neck!

Our second Spoonbill of the year was found by Phil early morning on Tuesday, and was again present Wednesday morning.  True to form for the species, as it was actually awake (they spend most their time asleep!) it spent the whole time I was watching it frantically feeding in its favoured shallow pool...

Pied Wagtail for scale!

You can see in the above photo it was a lovely adult too. We usually get younger birds on the Axe, I have  seen far fewer adults.  Note the lovely yellow wash to neck sides, some really vivid yellow bare parts (under its bill in particular) and the all white primaries.  Note also the neck plumes and shaggy neck feathers.   Amazing to think this bird is probably a UK breeder - how times have changed!

A rare moment its bill came up!

It shared the field with an Egyptian Goose for a bit of extra Axe quality, presumably different from the four present briefly at the end of January.

And I finish this brief post with some good news... there's only a week or two until Wheatears and Sand Martins will be featuring in my sporadic blog posts! Although I cannot wait to see them again, I must admit it doesn't really feel like we have had a winter this year - horribly mild for my liking.