Woodcock anyone?

I'd honestly like to tell you how this morning, before first light, dressed in snow camouflage, I tramped though the frozen snow, entering the local nature reserve and a la Chris Packham or Sir David Attenborough, carefully edged my way towards a beautiful Woodcock and clicked away until I had the perfect exposure.

But, to be honest, what actually happened is, at breakfast, I popped back to the kitchen to pick up a spoon and spied this bird sitting on the snow outside my garden shed. Seeing the huge bill, I knew immediately it was perhaps a Snipe or a Woodcock. You have never seen anybody whizz so fast to pick up camera and change lens, turn on focus, set shutter and aperture and click.

Through double glazing, still streaked with yesterday's snow, I thought this was not a bad effort, but as soon as I took a step closer (I was still a good 8 feet from the window), the bird must have seen me and was off in a hurry, leaving a few lines in the snow where it's wing tips touched.

What amazed me was there was no other sign of it having landed. If it had been a duck for instance, I'd expect a landing line of disturbed snow, but a characteristic of the Woodcock is it can just drop into cover as if it has collapsed.

What a nice way to start the week.:)