Twitching

It turned out nice today, as they say, and it was good to spend a fair proportion of it outside. After walking the dogs, Mr DawnAgain and I went to Port Solent to meet his mum for lunch as it was her birthday.

After coming home for a brief interlude we then headed over to Thursley common early evening to check out the nature reserve which our friend, Stuart, had recommended to us as being popular with the birding community. We started at Moat pond where we happened upon the resident heron and spent a fair bit of time stalking him with our cameras only for him outwit us and fly to the other side of the pond every time, whereby we would follow him and then he'd fly to the other side again. And so on.

Eventually we decided to walk along one of the trails and what a beautiful place it is! All marshland and boardwalks with all manner of bird life including cuckoos and curlew. I only discovered this week that curlew don't always live by the coast - fancy that! This shot was the closest I got today but it was lovely - and odd - to hear them calling.

We also met some very friendly people. It seems that if you wander around with a DSLR and telephoto lens random people will just come up and talk to you. Firstly was a chap from Haslemere who ended up trying to recruit us to the local camera club. Then there was a nice young couple who were really excited to have seen the heron and got a picture of it on their mobile phone.

Finally, as we went back to the car park, the driver's door of the car next to ours opened and a man dressed all in green called over, "Did you get anything good?". There ensued a long conversation about the whereabouts of the Thursley common cuckoo (some fantastic pictures of which I saw on Twitter this week). He had been there for 10 hours and taken 3000 photos and was just off home to see his other half who had, apparently, cooked him a shepherd's pie. My guess was that it was probably in the dog by the time he got back. Anyway, an imminent return visit for us is very much in the offing!