Hotting up for the podium spots!

 Yes indeedy - moving swiftly on, nothing to see at skwinse anyway but LOTS to see at Galley! A mid-pm scan of the lake produced first an incredulous male pochard, and then as the scan continued, a noteworthy male wigeon and a kingfisher, before finally alighting on a frankly outrageous black-necked grebe! My first on patch since 2009 and my 5th wan evah!

Marvellous!

Proof-of-life evidence as follows:

A black-necked grebe, earlier

And some more

A pochard, earlier

Either way, it was absolute scenes on the Majik Patio (tm)!

In other news, Reg has been kind of banging them in up at Collieston, although he did rather over-dramatically announce that it had been an "Awful birding autumn for me ( literally worst I can remember!)" before admitting that he'd also only just got his first Great Northern of the year....

All to play for then, for those podium places....

More "just off the beach" japes

 Urged into uncharacteristic action by Seppy's "just off the beach" tickage, I've been checking Squince a fair bit over the past week, more out of desperation than expectation, it has to be said. With him breathing down my neck, just .02 of a % behind in the race for "best of the losers", anything would do -- stock dove, peregrine, collared dove... hardly too much to ask, is it?

What I certainly wasn't expecting was to stumble into this fine Slavonian Grebe at Squince this very morning. 

A-la Seppy's LTD, it was literally "just off the beach".

Happy daze! Moves me to a not too shabby 103.23% and crucially, more than one species ahead (I hope) of yer man at Galley.