Friday 23 October 2015

Phew!... and far between

Well, it's been a sloooooooow summer and autumn... with bugger all to report on patch, truth be told.

I was beginning to think that the year-ticks had dried up as the rest of the field came tearing up the leaderboard (or ambling, in Seppy's case, natch). And then the lake... which is always spectacularly underwhelming... at last started to drip feed a few scores!

Pretty, but generally pretty useless -- the lake on patch

It started with a duck! A gadwall, to be precise... which was a fine patch tick just sitting there on the lake, plain as day as I cruised up on the bike for a quick scan a week or so back. Then a few days ago (the morning after Seppy bagged his) a COOT turned up.
Coot-tastic phone-binned record shot of a patch mega

What are the chances? It's the first coot on patch for at least eight years... which makes it pretty special in my book. The gadwall was a first, but to be honest I'm much more excited about the coot. Not sure why. Could all of this mean the lake is about to deliver a fowl bonanza in the final quarter?

Probably not... but all this recent shenanigans puts me on an even 100% for the year, and takes me temporarily back to the top of the leaderboard, which is nice.

It also means that if anything else turns up it will make next year harder. Every silver lining has its cloud, I suppose.

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