Blacktoft Sands...

It's been a while since I spent any time at Blacktoft Sands, so I called in yesterday. The lapwings were making nests - just a scrape in the ground - and the black tailed godwits were coming into their breeding plumage. Snipe were so well camouflaged agaist the reeds that, unless they moved, you couldn’t see them at all. A flock of about thirty dunlin was easier to spot because they never stop moving. Marsh harriers were doing their mating ‘sky dance’. Best of all was a pair of goldeneye and the return of the avocets…

A male goldeneye. From a distance it looks black and white; close up, in the spring sunlight, the head is a 'metallic' green...