Once, Twice, Three Times a Bittern

Birding is a hobby of ups and downs, of just turning up and having six birdwatchers tell you what you've just missed.

That's on some days.

On other days you nip out for lunch, sit down, have a chat with other birders. Bob say's "I just saw a bittern go down behind the green sluice", so you keep an eye on that patch for 5 or 10 minutes, then a brown innocuous birds, not unlike a juvenile gull starts flapping out from there and you shout "Bittern".

Suddenly the hide is silent, and it's hard to breath as every birder takes a deep breath, sucking all of the air from the hide, before getting their binoculars on the bird. It settles in front of the reeds and starts walking across the ice. Then as it hops into another set of reeds it forces another bittern out of hiding! All this and we'd already seen a different bittern on the far side of the lake.

Some days you're the birder who says "Guess what you've just missed"