The water was sparkling with the sun shining on it. The water was clear and it was calm too. It was the perfect day for spotting a few birds. Shame it wasn't like this yesterday for my birdwatch post. The birds were certainly happy to be out and about, and I saw a wide variety of interesting birds. Firstly, we went down to the sea front. I took some pictures of the sea, and you could see the Isle of Wight quite clearly.
After admiring the sea, I saw a group of small wading birds along the shoreline. I watched them intently, and at first I thought they were a group of juveniles of some sort. How wrong I was. I am most unsure about sea bird ID's than any other birds, so a quick look in the bird book told me that the birds in question were infact adult Turnstones. There was quite a large group of them too. While it was a sunny day, it wasn't warm, so these Turnstones were always moving about.
After watching these birds, I simply crossed the quiet road and had a look over the nature reserve. The first thing I noticed was a Cormorant/Shag on a wooden pole sticking out of the water. The reserve is made up mostly of reeds as you can tell from the picture below. My camera is great for what I need it for but it doesn't have zoom good enough to give some very good close-ups of the birds. I didn't however want to edit it to give a closer view because I didn't want to reduce any quality.
I find that some birds are sometimes forgotton by birdwatchers. The Cormorant is (in my opinion) one of these birds. While their colour is at first look quite dull, a closer look will show that they are in fact quite beautiful in their own right. I was struggling to work out if the one in the picture is a Cormorant or a Shag. Please comment if you can tell. Either way, this bird is one that I have never photographed before and actually have never really thought about before either.
After seeing this bird, I moved on and watched some of the ducks of the reserve. I watched them from the bridge where I saw the Grass Snake last time I visited. Click here for the post on that. This time I saw some very different ducks, and one caused quite a bit of trouble when I was trying to work out its ID. This one at first seemed quite timid, but eventually came closer to the bridge where I was watching. It seemed quite happy to be with the Coots.
I really was unsure about this one, so I brought up the topic on Birdforum. I must admit that it is a great service. I have used it before and was very impressed. Before I started using it, I thought the responses would be slow and inaccurate. I was mistaken however, and it is completely the opposite. I would really reccommend that you use it at some point if you are unsure about an ID. I now know that it is a Fulvous Whistling Duck. Now this is surprising. These aren't found in this country so its a real surprise to have seen one. The reply I got on Birdforum was "Looks like a Fulvous Whistling-Duck. Seems a bit far from home"! I looked its picture up on Wikipedia and its exactly right.
Picture of Fulvous Whistling Duck from Wikipedia.
Picture of Fulvous Whistling Duck taken by me.
While I was watching some of the gulls at the reserve, I saw a tiny bird flutter out of the corner of my eye. I turned around and the bird was a Goldcrest. It got quite close, but even with my zoomed in camera, it turned out small in the picture. While I was watching it, I lost sight of it several times. They really are tiny. The picture I took isn't great but I was still pleased that I saw it. 
We have seen this tiny bird in our garden recently, but I have struggled to get any photos. They generally don't use garden feeding stations so I guess it is mostly luck that I have seen one at home. I will have some more use for Birdforum soon as I check out an ID for another duck I have seen recently. I will post about this soon, and I should have some other photos to show to you as well. An out of season Swan Cygnet was seen too, so I have some interesting stuff to show you.
