SWLABT - She Was Like A Bearded Tit *

 OK. This one may be a bit obscure, but it's a great song anyway. 

*SWLABR from Cream's brilliant 1967 album Disraeli Gears is an abbreviation of She Was Like A Bearded Rainbow. A slight change to the title and we have a tenuous link for the bird of the day - Bearded Tit.

But first a reminder of what the Cream album cover looked like.

Cream's Disraeli Gears album cover

WOW. When I saw this in 1967 it was just mind blowing. All of a sudden the art classes at school got very interesting with dayglo paint being made available!! We had a ball 😎 not much real art going on but we were enjoying ourselves at last. Disraeli Gears was seldom off the turntable in the common room. Turntable? Ask your mum or dad 😂

But enough of history and back to the business in hand - namely at least 10 Bearded Rainbows I mean Tits at the Mere this morning in the reed bed off second field. I heard them as I approached the shore so I got the camera ready, as usually they flit straight through these small outlying reed beds. Not today though - they stayed put for quite a while allowing me to fire off 400+ shots on the camera. Over 300 of these were disposable straight away on review, but a few were OK and not obscurred by reeds or blurred.

Bearded Tit off second field

A few nearly-good-enough photos were discarded...reeds got in the way or were out of focus

This would have been great! Bloody reed.

I got a video of 6 birds leaving the reed bed for a fly around but I haven't edited it yet. 

Before all this excitement I saw Greenshank, a couple of Snipe and a Water Rail on first field edge. Again, photos were less than one would hope for, but it was a couple of hundred yards distant. Only one of the Snipe made the photos by the way, the other went into the undergrowth.

Greenshank and Water Rail

Greenshank and Snipe together, with Water Rail to the right

 These are heavily cropped but record the moment at least.

Dragonflies continue to be seen everywhere, attracting Hobbies to feast on them. I saw a couple this morning over the fields but no images for the blog. Migrant Hawkers are the most numerous, but also Common Darter and a single Emporer yesterday off second field.

Migrant Hawker in flight

It was a surprise when I looked at the photos to find that the pair of mig hawkers I captured coupled up had been photo bombed 😂😂

Photo bombed pair of Migrant Hawkers

Common Darter at our pond

Most of the crop fields have been cut now to make way for the wintering birds - or at least one or two fields will be left with stubble I hope. Greylag Geese, Barnacle Geese, Linnets, Goldfinches, Reed Buntings and pigeons and doves are enjoying them at the moment.

Mammals are a bit thin on the ground apart from the usual squirrels and Roe Deer, so a reasonable view of a Weasel in first field was a nice lift a few days ago.

Weasily the best find of the day