Garganey #37

A great day out on The Wirral starting with a quick stop at Ness Gardens for the plant fair where we picked up an Astrantia, something I have been struggling with growing from seed. 
Then we drove up to Hoylake expecting to see lots of birds at high tide, but they were nowhere to be seen. Note to self - no birds on a sunny weekend as the beach is full of dog walkers. I have a suspicion that most of the waders have moved on from Hoylake now anyway, so maybe it wasn't such a good idea. 
Anyway, after a quick stop at Tesco for a sandwich, we ended up at RSPB Burton Mere. They have had a female long tailed duck there for a while now and we were hoping to see it, but couldn't locate it. The sun was completely in the wrong place and both times we stopped at the screen, the people there said it had not been seen. As we are not very patient birders, we moved on. Our consolation bird, which is much more handsome, was a male Garganey. Again the sun was really in the wrong place so it's not as good as it should be, but I was very pleased to have got a reasonable record shot of this scarce summer visitor to the UK. 

The Garganey is a small dabbling duck, slightly larger than a Teal. They spend the winter in central Africa, with small numbers appearing in the UK between March and October. Breeding pairs favour shallow wetlands, mostly in south and central England. They can be very secretive, preferring areas of cover from aquatic plants. 
They rarely breed in the UK and are occasional visitors so we were very lucky to see it - fully zoomed and heavily cropped I'm afraid as it was some distance away. 
We also saw and heard our first chiffchaffs of the year - they were singing all over the reserve. A lovely sign of spring.