A time to reflect!

 Dawn at Goldcliff today saw perfect light around 6am for capturing the birds on the water, with a number of species looking lovely with their reflections in the water - certainly a time to reflect.
The Avocets first caught my eye as they fed with their distinctive side to side head movement. Later on I watched a pair with four chicks, and one of the adults crouched down so that one of the chicks could shelter from the Sun under her belly. It was lovely to watch parenting at its best.
Whilst all the busy feeding action was going on, this drake Shoveler was sleeping through the thick of it. He quietly floated almost motionless on the mirror water as the world carried on around him.
This male Common Redshank however had other things on his mind - entirely. Here he can be seen displaying, which involves several minutes of wing stretching and fast beats, coupled with calls, and eventually he starts to move closer to the female. In this case he edged closer, still calling and wing beating, then closer still, then closer, and as he was about to mount her, she decided to fly off. Even the guys in the bird world get the cold shoulder sometimes.
The same couldn't be said for the male Greylag Goose in this picture. He obviously had the charm as they have successfully raised a brood of five fluffy-yellow goslings. They looked lovely in the water as their bodies reflected off the water.  It looked a scene of left, right, left, right left....




























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