The Best Duck On The Rushy Pen!

Now you all know I like a good duck!

Ducks simply don't get better than this one!

The first time I have managed to photograph one, and not a bad first time effort.

Me and my mum , and my brother went to Slimbridge today. My last visit for 2011 I suspect. Christmas is now fast approaching.

The morning could not have been better for photography. Almost perfect light. Low sun, plenty of colour in the birds, not too cold to walk about in.

I've got to be honest, I thought this Snipe was going to be my blip entry today. Again, the best photograph I have managed of one so far. And Snipe are like buses, you wait to photograph one, and two come along at once.

We started the morning by doing a tour of the hides from the Rushy Pen up to the Holden tower. My last visit there was late summer, the Rushy Pen was fairly quiet then, it is not now. There are thousands of wildfowl there, including over a hundred of the iconic Bewick Swans. A little WWT fact for you, the study of Bewick Swans is the longest running conservation study in the world for any bird species.

There are of course loads of the resident Mute Swans there on Swan Lake, we happened to catch a feeding frenzy just before our own lunch.

We also spotted this weird Ruddy Shelduck hybrid on the Rushy Pen.

The weather broke after lunch, we managed to stay dry, but it was no longer any good for decent photos. So we headed to the Zeiss Hide in the hope of seeing an elusive Bittern. It wasn't really a day for listing, as I wanted to take some decent photographs, but it would have been nice to picked up a good year tick, but it wasn't to be.

It was a great day out, and a nice way to see November out before the madness of the Christmas rush starts from tomorrow!

There's a load more photos from the visit in my flickr group.