A walk to the lakes

Coot in Pursuit – chasing off a rival

Stonydelph lakes are only a short walk from our home, and I don’t visit them nearly enough.  So today I set off with my camera hoping to catch some of the squabbles among the water birds as they fight for their territory.  Normally you don’t have to encourage coots to fight – they do it all the time.  However today there must be something in the air, because they were abnormally placid and I had to wait a long time to catch any of them having a squabble.

There were relatively few birds on the lakes, mostly mallard, coot, moorhen, black-headed gull and mute swan.  I heard a very loud wren in full song, and there were blue tits, great tits and long-tailed tits in the surrounding trees.  No sign of the tufted duck that are often there in the winter, nor of the pintail that was there last year.

I did manage a few shots of birds in action though.  Maybe a bit later in the year there will be more birds about, and more action to capture.

Coot in attack posture

Female mallard

Portrait of a coot

Duck bathing and splashing up the water

Mute swan failing to take off