HOBBY FAILURE AGAIN!

   Once again yesterday I found myself at Minsmere on the lookout for Hobbies but the early morning cloud cover didn't bode well at the Bittern hide and indeed it was very quiet apart from the occasional Bittern flying in to feed. Even the normally reliable Marsh Harriers seemed to be absent now that many of the youngsters have fledged and the Hobbies were totally non existent.
   I had to content myself with some nice views of a pair of Water Voles in the dyke to my right who were busy collecting bits of dry grass and taking it back to their burrow presumably to use as nesting material. Also appearing regularly in front of me was a Kingfisher who spent about an hour in total fishing from a branch emerging from the water so I passed the time trying to catch him in the process of diving which was not easy as he was a distance away from me in bad light and was very, very fast. Some of the results are included below but none are really much good and I hope to do better sometime in the future.
   Later in the morning I moved over to the scrape to look for any waders that might have started their migrations after breeding. There were a few Spotted Redshanks around along with the occasional Ruff still in summer plumage. I also spotted a Greenshank and a Green Sandpiper along with the always present Oystercatchers and a good number of Godwits. Most of the gulls and Avocets were absent after the young had fledged which made the scrape seem much quieter than in recent times and was a reminder that July and August are traditionally the quietest months for birds and photography.
   One other thing worth noting was the presence of a very pale, almost white Sand Martin that is known as leusistic which means reduced in pigmentation and not albino. I did spend some time trying to get a picture of this bird but its distance from me and its speed made this difficult along with the camera lens struggling to focus accurately on such a small moving target.