Great Crested Grebes display at Frampton Court

I’ve had a very long  period away from blipping, but I’m starting again today. I also hope to back blip some of the intervening days since Woodpeckers and I went to her mother’s funeral near Oban in Scotland. She and her sister TMLHereAndThere both wrote very movingly about the whole experience of meeting up with their extensive extended family and I didn’t think I had much to add.

But today seems a good time to start again. My dear friend Pip M. came up from his home in Bristol to visit Frampton Court Lake, and what a brilliant day it has been. The weather remains perfect and springlike, warm and sunny, with only the very earliest signs of spring.

He’d bought some binoculars recently and was keen to look at the birds I promised he’d see. In fact there weren’t huge numbers but what we saw was fascinating. The local GlosterBirder website has mentioned recent sightings on the lake of a Ring-necked Duck, and we did see it in the distance. Several birders appeared looking for it, having come some distance for that purpose and I was able to give them indications of where to look.

There were many cormorants, various other ducks, coots, 20+ swans, two herons, greylag and Canada geese as well as another unusual white one called a Ross’ goose. Tow oystercatchers greeted us with a circular swing around the islands before flying away westwards, singing loudly and passing low directly over our heads. I love oystercatchers and they always remind me of being at Helena’s family house in years gone by on the shore of Loch Etive, and I saw some there last month.

But the main delight today was seeing several Great Crested Grebes, and watching their famous mating display. In fact I was able to photograph the various stages of their courtship display which took several minutes. My blip shows them coming together to swap weeds which they had just individually dived for after an initial ‘meeting’. They swam away from each other and then turned  putting their heads down horizontally, like a goose does when trying to threaten other birds away from their young. They then swam back towards each other before rising on their bums to stand and neck as they offered each other the weeds. There followed a lot of head waving, pointing of beaks in the air, rising of their crest towards each other over and over, and then finally relaxing and swimming away together Asia nothing had happened. Wonderful to see, and all happening not too far away from where I stood.

They then swam towards the edge the lake where some bushes and trees seemed offer them a good nesting site, as least that is what I’m guessing. I think a large fish was also swallowed by one of the grebes a little earlier.

Today I read that an osprey appeared over the lake the day after we were there, and that a white-tailed eagle was seen flying above the River Severn near WWT Slimbridge at about the same time. I’ll have to return but with my connector for my monopod, which I had stupidly left at home. I only discovered it when I tried to mount the camera on the monopod.

I've added an couple of 'Extras' – the ring-necked ducks and the beginnings of the courtship.