Half a Garganey is better than none!

I had a few more pictures to put up tonight but for some reason Blogger declines to add any more! There are more of the Garganey here. They're at the bottom of this page and more on the next.

I popped in to the Restharrow hide at Sandwich Bay this afternoon, and I was very pleased to find that this pair of Garganeys had arrived and were contentedly feeding not far from the hide. The bird was first recorded in the UK in 1668 and the name comes from an Italian name, via Switzerland, where the "Garg" refers to the rattle noise the male makes during courtship.

The old East Anglian name of "Crick" also refers to the call. The female above isn't particularly obvious, looking rather like a female Teal. She differs in being slightly larger and bulkier with a larger, straighter bill. She also has quite a distinctive face pattern, with a dark crown and pale stripes, above and below a darker eye stripe and a pale patch at the base of the bill, and a pale throat.

The males is very different with a dark purplish crown and bold white crescents from above the eye to the back of the neck. The flanks are pale grey and the long back and white scapulars drop over back of the flanks. In flight the blue-grey forewing is distinctive.

Other birds. This morning I was lucky enough to come across a pair of Buzzards, not far from home. I did get a few rather poor pictures and I watched displaying high in the air for a while before they disappeared from view. At the scrape a Yellow Wagtail was on a nearby island but steadfastly refused to show much more than the top of its head, before it flew off calling loudly and didn't return.

Mothing. Another cold night meant there was little activity, just a single Hebrew Character and a Clouded Drab.

The cold east wind put e off a return visit to Langdon to try and photograph the Dingy Skippers, but there is a picture of one taken by Phil Chantler here.

Help needed I've had a message from Keith, who lives in Sea Street, St Margaret's, he asks if you know who can stop the house alarm that been going off for three days please get them to turn it off!

I just found this message on the blogger help site:

Thursday, April 17, 2008

The photo upload feature is currently unreliable. We are working on the problem and will post an update when the problem is resolved.

Posted by John at 14:12 PDT