Far and Near

On recent birding trips the camera has remained firmly in its bag, very few opportunities have presented themselves and yesterday our visit to Pennington Marsh to catch up with the Long-billed Dowitcher was very nearly the same result. The bird remained at the far side of Fishtail Lagoon at long range. Just a record shot of a long staying vagrant.

 

Today I was confined to household duties - "the Gas Man cometh". Not really a problem but mid morning there was a tweet reporting a Savannah Sparrow just down the road in Lancing. Very inconvenient!. So I made do by recording the newt population of our garden pond at very close quarters. One female stood out from the rest by being very pale. I remain amazed by just how many newts a small garden pond can maintain - there are at least 20 present and our frog population has dwindled to two or three.