Back at Frampton Court Lake, birdwatching

I returned to Frampton Court Lake knowing the visiting osprey had been seen earlier in the morning. I didn’t arrive until after 2pm but there were already at least a dozen others standing at the edge of the lake all with the same objective.

The gossip was that someone had seen it about an hour before I arrived with a fish and that it flew off across to the woodlands bordering the far side of the lake well beyond the islands.  

I stood looking across the lake on the off chance whilst chatting with several bird watchers and photographers. After a while I started photographing other wildlife including grebes, a dozen cormorants, thirty or so swans, occasional distant hobbies and a common tern which also hunted quite high up over the water and trees.

Word went up when the osprey reappeared but I couldn’t get a decent shot of it in flight, as the sun disappeared just as it flew towards the island. It perched on the same tree on which I’d seen it on Sunday but from our point of view it was mostly obscured behind the tree. It flew again several times but always towards the distant woodland and I’m disappointed not to have got better shots. It finally returned to sit amongst the tree leaves on the same branch as Sunday and I’ve added it as an ‘Extra’ for my records. Once again it has a half eaten fish in its right claws. In fact whenever it flew it seemed to be taking a fish with it.

I’ve decided to blip these juvenile cygnets which are nearly ready to cast adrift from their parents. I just liked the way they took off in front of us in a small group and made a couple of circuits of the lake. I also like my other ‘Extra’ showing one of the swans and a heron standing on the dead tree trunk that had fallen into the lake from the northern end of the island, just below where the osprey perched.