Just Great...

I had a really good spell at Mere Sands Woods reserve yesterday during a brief respite in the horrendous weather we've had recently. I watched a lovely Little Grebe fishing and saw a stunning kingfisher fly directly towards me before it looped off around the mere. 

Then at a different spot I heard the tell tale call of another kingfisher and and after a few minutes searching the reeds I spotted it and spent the next 15 - 20 minutes watching it fish. It caught what appeared to be newts, eating one and after killing the second he hung it on a branch possibly to go back for later. 

Although I managed to get a few pictures it was too far away to get a decent clear image. I will have to save hard and maybe have to sell some gear to be able to afford a better lens and get the sort of images a fellow photographer managed to get (but his camera and lens set up would have been around £17K so I would have expected the sort of images he was keen to show off). 

That being said I don't think you have to spend such a huge sum of money to get great images and I think these shots of a fishing Great Crested Grebe are proof of that. 

I think these are such regal looking birds and they are so sleek as they dive in search for food, barely leaving a ripple as they break the surface.

Dabbling

The teal is a surface feeding duck dabbling on the surface for seeds or upending to feed just below the surface on small snails or insect larvae.

They are quite small and tend to flock together in small social groups.

As with most birds the males are much more brightly coloured that the females as can be seen in the second picture.

They really are beautiful birds but the teal also gives its name to a colour but looking at these pictures I wonder what the colour teal actually is. I am told it is the stripe around and behind his eye...