Spoonbill...

After days of grey skies, the sun finally came out today… so I took some pix around Spalding. In the afternoon I had a wander around the RSPB reserve at Frampton Marsh, on the Wash. At the visitor centre I was asked “What do you want to see today?” Off the top of my head I said “spoonbill” (I’ve never seen one). “Well, you’re in luck. There’s a spoonbill on the marshland. Just go to the sea wall, turn right and you should see it”. And there it was, right on cue: feeding next to a little egret… another bird I would have been unlikely to see twenty years ago. Much bigger than the egret, the spoonbill was swishing that strange bill this way and that through the shallow water.

I reported my sighting - and others - when I returned to the visitor centre. Since they’d “made my day”, by supplying a convenient spoonbill, they tried to recruit me as an RSPB member. If I refused, they were going to lock me in the visitor centre. That didn’t bother me; I’ve lived in less salubrious places. Maybe I should become a member. I approve of the work the RSPB are doing, in creating and maintaining so many valuable habitats. I just don’t want my email inbox filled up every day with ‘special offers’.

Staying in Boston tonight, in the shadow of the ‘Stump’…