Preening

From the sublime with yesterday's Hen Harriers to the mundane today with two views of a Mallard.  Mallards are such a common bird that I tend to ignore them when I'm out with my camera looking for wildlife.  The males have very reflective colours which make them a surprisingly difficult subject to do justice to (those iridescent greens and blues are hard to get right).  Notice how the lovely blue feathers in the main turn to almost dark purple in the extra.

This particular bird got a bit too close to the female Great Crested Grebe, the male Great Crested Grebe is obviously feeling very protective at the moment and dived below the surface to attack the Mallard from underwater.  At one stage he'd actually pulled the Mallard below the surface.  The Mallard really didn't like this at all and the extra is a shot of him fleeing for a safer part of the lake in panic.