Aerial Combat

Having flown to Henstridge on Thursday I was intending to drive there today for the Wings and Wheels event. But this morning when I looked at the weather I decided it probably wasn't going to be worth it. Having seen a report of the few aircraft that attended, I think I made the right decision.

So a few jobs got done instead, and then I went out to join my son at a local nature resort in the hope of getting a kingfisher shot or two. We saw herons, great crested grebe, mandarin duck, mallard, coot, moorhen (adult and juvenile), Canada geese, blue tit, great tit, robin, nuthatch, dunnock, magpie, pigeon, gulls, terns, a rat that was happy to feed from the droppings below the bird feeders, a squirrel who thought he was a bird so sat happily on the bird-feeder munching away for quite some time, and quite a few other birds further away too. Most of them got photographed one way or another with differing results.

But no kingfisher ... until ... 2 minutes before we were due to leave one flew in and settled on a post about 75 yards away. I did get a couple of reasonable, but distant, shots before it flew at very low level across the lake, and then a coupe of more flashes as it moved up the other side.

However, rather than choose a distant shot of a kingfisher I thought that this picture of aerial combat between two gulls who both thought they had perching rights on this one particular post was quite appropriate for today. Well I had hoped to see some old wartime aircraft hadn't I!

The silly thing about these two was that there were several other very desirable and vacant posts within about 20 yards of this one. In the end neither of them ended up on it so they both lost out. The only one who gained was me, with a reasonable shot of aerial combat and anyone else who enjoys looking at it.

There's a moral there for today I'm sure!