Black-winged Pratincole at The Ouse Washes, RSPB

A very dodgy 'record' shot of this 3* mega rarity that has been hanging around the RSPB site of the Ouse Washes in Cambridgeshire for a while now. The Black-winged Pratincole should be on the Steppe, grassland or arable area of the northern Black Sea or Kazakhstan where this species breeds, but instead this particular bird has found itself in the U.K. moving down the east coast and ending up in Cambridgeshire, where myself and Lisa saw it yesterday evening.

I really should have gone for it a long time ago, but the walk mentioned on the report of at least 4km (one way) and the fact that it kept disappearing put me off a bit. What a lightweight, I hear you cry! With it being continuously reported on Monday and the weather set fair, I made up my mind to go and managed to rope poor old Lisa into coming with me.

After a seemingly never ending walk we arrived at the birds favoured location where a friendly birder was encountered and after enquiries told us that the bird was flying around several hundred metres in the sky, but putting on a good show. At that moment he saw something moving, so we both raised our bins and there was my first Black-winged Pratincole flying gracefully through the sky, its movements reminiscent of a Black Tern. Both Lisa and myself got great views through my scope and I managed to get a couple of truly awful record shots until the bird appeared to land in long grass, where it could no longer be seen. As night fell we started the long walk back, but somehow, it didn't seem as long!

Showing its black underwings

Showing the top of the bird which shows its lack of white trailing edge of the inner wing (a feature of the similar Collared Pratincole)

In Flight

I have been trying to get some half-decent shots of birds flying, as of now I am yet to succeed. The shots below represent the best of my efforts so far.

A trio of Whoopers

Three Common Cranes (2 adult and 1 juvenile)

The same 3 Common Cranes (the juvenile is the bird on the right)

Hopefully, I will improve as time goes by!

Fish on a Friday

A male Kingfisher, told from a female on account of his all black bill, the female has an orange base to the lower part of the bill, a kind of lipstick! The above bird was seen on my recent trip to the Ouse Washes and was seen fishing and at one point I managed to get a couple of shots of the bird with a fish in his bill, not great as the sun decided to go in and so the bird is a bit dark. More practice required.

Spoonbill

Below is a short video of a Spoonbill at the Ouse Washes in Cambridgeshire. The bird was pretty distant and I had to use my cameras full zoom at 140x, hence the grainy, shaky footage, but the bird is obvious and you can see the strange way it feeds by moving its head from side to side.

I did take a few still photos, one at full zoom and one at 35x, not great, but you can see the bird.

Spoonbills used to breed in this country, until the 17th century, but were extinct as a breeding bird until the 1990's, when two young were raised in North-west England. Colonisation seems imminent, but they have not yet become established, although they are now a more regular sight, especially in the East of the country.