Distant Cormorant

I had a little time to stop at the artificial island on my way to the sanctuary this afternoon and both the swan and the Great Crested Grebe let me have a look at their eggs. If my calculations are correct, the fist Grebe egg could hatch around the 16th and the first swan egg around the 23 April. While I was taking some photos I spotted a Cormorant that had just surfaced at the other side of the island. They do appear there sometimes but it has been ages since I last saw one. This Cormorant was so far away that I had to take this shot with the camera on full digital zoom (I never use the optical zoom) and I also had to crop it quite a bit.

When I was walking up to the sanctuary's gates I had one of those moments where you want to scream because of a missed opportunity! A Nuthatch landed on the ground only a few metres away from me and sat there for about 20-25 seconds. I didn't have a camera in my hand and it flew away before I would have been able to get it out of my bag!

After my walk with one of the dogs from the sanctuary I sat down on a bench at the park for a little while and looked at all my photos from today. I was just about to put the camera away when I spotted another Nuthatch - or perhaps the same one - hanging upside down on the side of a tree. I managed to take a couple of shots of this one but unfortunately they were not good enough because the background behind the nuthatch was too bright!

Thank you ever so much for the lovely comments and stars on my blip of cockatiel Mieke. :)