Heading for disaster

It's been a beautiful sunny, warm day - I resisted the temptation to have a sneaky kip in my hammock after a nice lunch and went down to the lakes.

I saw buzzard, coypu, two deer, rabbits, a hare, lots of finches or different flavours, stonechat, wagtails, a green woodpecker, 3 kingfisher (AND resisted blipping them) and a greater spotted woodpecker.

See more hooky-beaked-cormontness here!

As I made my way, following the river, I saw through the forest the whole bank on one side crowded with great egrets, little egrets, purple and grey heron, they were almost touching each other.
The water was black with cormorants - I have never seen so many herons / egrets and cormorants in one place - I guesstimated that there must have been over 100 heron and about 500 cormorants - which all took off at the same time spreading out through both sides of the forest.
At one time the sky was black with birds - I tried to get some shots of this spectacle, but my 500mm lens did no justice to the number of birds that were there.

All along my walk, each lake was crowded with cormorants, which took off in a noisy squawking mass.

I really dont know how these lakes, there are quite a few of them, can sustain all of these fish-eating birds, along with the grebes, night herons and kingfishers - it really is so way out of proportion - especially as both cormorants and herons are apex predators, so nothing predates them.

In this shot of a cormorant resting and digesting its food between fishing forays, I thought there was just one, but when I looked at it on my screen I can now see there were two ... they are everywhere.

Wednesday will be cormorant tours day ;)

I hope your Sunday is a good one and that you are looking forward to the week ahead :)