Silly Saturday

Today's the first Saturday of the month, so of course it's Silly Saturday in memory of Admirer - hosted this month by Pipersmom.

The first silly thing about this blip is that I went out for my bliphunt walk without my longest telephoto lens, as I wasn't planning to take wildlife photos. I should know by now always to take all my lenses! This is taken with my 40-150mm lens at full stretch along with the 2x converter, giving a full-frame equivalent of 600mm but this silly bird was so far away I've had to crop the photo a lot. That made it very grainy, which I've tried to hide by applying an oil-paint filter to it.

The next silly thing is what was an Oystercatcher doing foraging for seeds in a newly planted field about 6 miles from the coast? Surely it would struggle to find oysters in this field! I looked them up and although they don't only eat oysters, they do predominantly eat bivalve shellfish (including cockles & mussels): I didn't find anything about them eating seeds (if any expert blippers know differently, please feel free to correct me). Apparently (like the Gadwall I saw yesterday) they're classed as "amber" conservationally so maybe their usual food is in short supply but it still seems silly.

It also seemed silly for an Oystercatcher to be several miles inland, but I read that in the breeding season they do often move away from the shore - however they tend to follow inland waterways. This field is about 2 miles from the River Tyne so that also seems a bit odd.