A Greylag gosling at Frampton lake

I discovered how to get to the lake at Frampton yesterday and realised that it was exactly the sort of place Woodpeckers had told me she wanted to visit today. We had thought we'd need to go to the Cotswold Water Park near Cirencester to get access to a sizeable body of water. We'd obviously prefer the lochs of Argyll where she grew up but that wasn't possible.

When we arrived we expected rain imminently but in fact other than a couple of short showers the weather stayed reasonably fair. It is a wonderful discovery, with a large body of water and several islands with a lot of tree cover and extensive pastures nearby. There were lots of birds including terns, oystercatchers and many varieties of coots, ducks and  geese. Spring was in the air and a lot of preparations being made for breeding with swans nesting on the reed beds on the far shore.

We walked along the western shore and when we came to a small inlet surrounded by trees we were surprised to see these two Greylag geese walking quite quickly towards the water. I realised that we had disturbed them and they were heading for the relative quiet of the water. Then we spotted the tiny gosling nestling close between them on the short journey to the lake.

I felt really lucky to see them and spent quite a while watching them both on the water and then a little later back on land when they were more at ease with our presence. They were rather less happy with the unwanted attention of other adult Greylags and the drake need to put its head down, hiss and chase them away. My extra shows them on route back to the lake just before we had to leave with the right legs keeping time.