Just ducky

R and I went to Stratford this morning, to finish our Christmas shopping and run a couple of errands we forgot to take care of yesterday. We combined this with a walk along the south side of the river, where I tasked R with finding me an interesting bird. What I had in mind was a winter thrush or a treecreeper, neither of which he managed, but he was still pretty pleased with himself when he spotted a little group of tufted ducks near the chain ferry dock - the first we've seen in Stratford since late September. That group moved on within a couple of days, and I'd all but reconciled myself to this being a tuftie-free winter in Stratford, so I was very happy to see these new arrivals.

As is usual with incoming winter migrant ducks they were nervy and mobile, and it took me a while to decide that there were seven - six males and one female, she being the most obviously unsettled of the group. I watched them for a few minutes, while R forged ahead to get the coffee and cake in, but they stayed a long way away and even 500mm of lens wasn't enough for good photos, so I left them and walked on. When I got level with the theatre I spotted another pair, but they were also over near the north bank, and with the canal bridge closed due to ice there was no quick route to get to them.

After finishing coffee, cake, and shopping R and I made our way back down to the river, and walked back to Old Town along the north bank. When we reached the chain ferry dock we found a mêlée of swans, mallards and black-headed gulls searching and competing for food, and in among them were the tufted ducks, diving repeatedly just off the dock, and swimming back and forth under the boardwalk. Given that an hour earlier they'd been hanging together in a tight group in the middle of the river and had seemed quite fearful, it was surprising to see them now working confidently among the bigger and more aggressive birds, and very close to the humans on the dock, with no sign of nervousness at all. In fact R said this was as close as he'd ever been to tufties, and with the shallow water well lit by bright sunlight he was fascinated to be able to watch them diving and swimming below the surface. They were zooming around and bobbing up and down so quickly that it was quite hard to count them, but in the end we agreed that there were eleven, which is a good size of group for this stretch of water. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high, but obviously I'll be very pleased if they stay for the rest of the winter.

Back at home I went to put out bird food and thaw the water in the bird bath, and realised that I'd run out of ground mix, so I crushed up a few fat balls and sprinkled the crumbs around for the ground feeders. I'd barely walked back into the house when the pied wagtail in the extras (which had been shouting at me from our next-door neighbour's roof while I was working) landed on the snow on the patio wall and began eating the fatty morsels. The fact that this photo was taken through a slightly grubby double-glazed window is a testament to the sharpness of the 100-500 lens.