Bom

By Bom

Bearded Tits

I had a morning that didn't quite go to plan. My Sainsbury delivery had an item with too short a date, so I need to get a refund. A planned walk was postponed due to illness. After checking their opening time, I arrived at FatFace at 9:05 to get a full refund for an online order (the items were mainly too short) to find it opened at 9:30. So I then drove over to Pensthorpe for its opening time for members of 9:30, but there had been so much rain overnight at Fakenham that they hadn't finished checking the reserve and closing off flooded areas. Fortunately I could initally go in the section with the bearded tits, so got my main photo of a female (left) and male (right) bearded tit. The reserve opened just after 10 and I had a wander to see the flamingos (see extra). I've never seen so much flooding at Pensthorpe at the shop side of the lakes, I didn't even try to get to the other side. 

The flamingos were a delight as always and are starting to display, which was fascinating (particularly the marching). A board there explained what this involved and I saw all of these moves:
- head flagging: turning head left to right, invitation to display, usually started by the tallest males;
- wing salute: wings open, showing off the brightest pink feathers;
- inverted wing salute: head down, wings out, bottoms up in the air, showing off pinkest feathers;
- preening: preening wing feathers with beak;
- leg stretch: head and leg stretched out horizontally:
- marching: walking tall and with purpose, often combined with head flagging and shouting.

Evidently there are 136 combinations of dance moves a flamingo can perform during courtship!

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