After leaving the Snow Buntings on the beach at Pakefield I moved down to Covehithe as the weather was set fair for the day and walked down to the broad. There were several people here too but most of them headed down to the beach leaving me and the other birdwatchers alone looking at a few ducks at the northern end of the broad. One of these ducks could be seen to be a Long Tailed Duck which spent most of its time repeatedly diving for food.
L T Ducks are sea ducks that breed on the tundra in Northern Europe and spend their winters on ice free waters further south usually at a distance from shore so it is a little unusual to get good close views like this. Although called the Long Tailed Duck it is actually only the male that has a long tail and as this bird is a female no tail can be seen.
I moved away from the other people to a position half way down the broad where it narrows in the hope that the duck would make its way towards me. I was in luck and after half an hour or so the bird began to swim towards me regularly diving and surfacing again giving me some good close views and then it took off and flew right past me giving me an excellent chance to take a few flight shots which I was very pleased with. The photographs here start off with the bird swimming, then taking off before flying past me.
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