Another weekend of marginal gains

The lake produced the goods again today. Although the much questioned long-tailed duck appeared to have done a bunk, there were near-krazy scenes on the patio early pm when news broke of a "pintail on patch".

Despite nearly losing it over the piss-poor lack of directions, I was still calm enough to figure out the observer probably wasn't scanning a distant pool near red strand from a random field on patch, as has happened previously, and that the bird was most likely on the lake, and therefore visible from the magic patio. Which it was.

Not an arctic skua

Exhibit A. Only my 3rd sighting on/from patch ever! And photographed expertly too, despite the lack of fone digiscoping equipage. Only one more species needed to break the 100% barrier...

In other news, Boy Royzah scored big today in the form of a lesser whitethroat on his patch, which moves him to within one species of the outright lead.

With Basil Faulty on the ropes and reduced to digging up drainpipes to try & create some better wader habitat, Royzah just needs to string a starling into either a waxwing or a little auk (or ideally both) to make a stout claim on the golden mallard. Of course he may need to get the bus to Wanstead & wrestle it out of Derek's pudgy mitts first...

Basil's new wader scrape