Slimbridge WWT (Thursday 28th November 2019)

On Thursday morning I was greeted by the unwelcome sound of next door's Leafblower Man, who seemed to have found a setting on his gadget that made it even louder and more intrusive than before. It prompted me to go out for the day, and while I was buying my Sam Widges Wiltshire Wallop baguette to take with me I decided on my destination: Slimbridge.
It had been a year since my last trip there and it had been on my mind to visit for a few weeks. I'd been waiting for a free day when the weather wasn't too offputting and this seemed as good as I was going to get. It's a bit of a trek to get there which is one reason why I don't visit more often despite being a Life Member, but I reached the village of Slimbridge shortly after midday and spent half-an-hour exploring the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal from Patch Bridge, and from there it is less than half a mile to the WWT.
I spent a couple of hours pootling all over their wetlands, starting with Swan Lake and the South Lake Discovery Hide, where I saw a juvenile cormorant, distinguished by its white breast, and I'm not sure I'd seen one before. It is visible in the background of a picture of gulls that I took. I was told that a bittern had been seen in the Zeiss Hide so I set off in that direction but there was no evidence of it.
Light was rather poor, and rain set in during the afternoon so my pictures weren't up to much. I am enjoying getting to know my 11mm Irix lens and, as you can see, the blip I have chosen, which was taken using it, has been played with a fair bit with effects filters and the like, and is definitely not SOOC. It looks so much better in Large.
Since my last visit the Holden Tower has been magically turned into Estuary Tower, with a new third level, overlooking the River Severn and the summer walkway. I was keen to see it and ventured onto the new roof terrace, which has spectacular views. The bittern had been seen from there too. I decided not to stick around for the wild bird feed, when the newly arrived Bewick's fly in to the Rushy Pen, although I did see a number of them in the fields grazing by the Tack piece, but set off for the drive home at 1545 hr, while it was still light.
When I looked through the study window the following morning onto next door's garden, there was not a leaf to be seen there.

L.
1.12.2019 (1339 hr)

Blip #3100 (#2850 + 250 archived blips taken 27.8.1960-18.3.2010)
Consecutive Blip #006
Blips/Extras In 2019 #277 + #093/100 Extras
Day #3535 (784 gaps from 26.3.2010)
LOTD #2229 (#2070 + 159 in archived blips)

Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust series
Wildlife series
Slimbridge series
Swan series

Gloucester and Sharpness Canal, Slimbridge, 28 November 2018 (Flickr album of 21 images)
WWT Slimbridge, 28 November 2019 (Flickr album of 53 images)

Taken with Pentax K-1 Mark II with Irix IL-11FF-PK 11mm F4 Firefly manual prime full-frame lens

Lozarhythm Of The Day:
Erykah Badu - Tempted (2018)
This version of the old Squeeze tune was released for Record Store Day last year and has been in my LOTD "bank" ever since, but I've only just found it on YouTube (It needs HTML5 so won't play on my browser so I hope it works).