Three-in-one today. Leg o' Mutton, London Wetland Centre and Cranford Park

I was up early this morning to meet up with John Few. 

Our first stop was a new place for me, the Leg O' Mutton Nature Reserve near Hammersmith.  A Tawny Owl had recently been seen and we were hoping to see it too. Sadly although we found the right tree, the owl was not in it's usual place, so we dipped. But we did see some other lovely birds. 

There were a couple of Egyptian Geese up another tree.....

The lake was almost completely frozen over, so we watched several gulls walking on ice.....

Somehow Fewy managed to drop his camera without noticing (dont ask....!) and while he went running off back down the path to find it, I amused myself with taking photos of this obliging Great Tit.....

and this even more obliging Song Thrush....

We were only there for an hour but it's a place I want to revisit soon. From there we made our way to the London Wetland Centre for a much needed cup of coffee and breakfast. Our good friend, Phillip, was there as always and I told him I wanted to get a Bittern photo for today's blog post. More about that later....

From the Dulverton Hide we had great views of a Shoveller......

Phillip said a Bittern had been seen from the WWF hide yesterday, and as we made our way there we bumped into a couple of other local birders who had just seen it, but warned us the hide was packed. There was a visiting coach load of out-of-area birders who had taken all the seats so it was standing room only.

I'm going to have a bit of a grumble now. You could tell the people in the hide were not our regular birders, as they simply hogged all the hide windows and seats. When seeing a bird like the Bittern, it really is courtesy and polite, to get yourself a good view, take some photos, then move out of the way to let others have a chance of getting their own good views and photos too. There were several regulars who didnt get to see the Bittern because of this visiting coach load. I wish I'd now taken the trouble to find out where they had all come from, as I'd like to visit their patch and do to them, what they did to us today.

Anyway, rant over, I did manage to get some photos, but they were all taken through glass.............

 

 

Not long after my last shot, our Burt disappeared back in to the reeds.

 

Elsewhere on site Fewy and I got some nice views of one of the Cormorants...

 

 

and from the 1st floor of the Peacock Tower we got some cracking views of a perched female Sparrowhawk.......just a shame she chose to sit on the far side of the tree, behind many twiggy branches.......

 

Abundant all over were many Robins......

 

Fewy, Rick and I decided to leave the centre at lunchtime and spend the last couple of hours of daylight watching the Kingfishers at Cranford Park.

The resident female didnt disappoint and showed several times perched on the stone bridge.....

 

 

Despite it being the middle of December there were still some lovley fungi to be found at both the LWC and Cranford Park....

 

To end my long day, I was half way through writing my blog at home, when my laptop 'died'. I rebooted it several times to no avail, even removed and replaced the battery, still to no avail. I was going to be spending the evening at Mum's anyway, so left a little earlier than planned and finished off my blog on her laptop instead. I just hope when I get home, my own laptop is working or else it's going to be an expensive time for me !