Where's Wally?

There is a game I used to play when I was a child called ‘Where’s Wally.’ There was a series of illustrations, often depicting hundreds of people and the aim of the game was to locate a character called Wally from each picture.

This morning at Inner Marsh Farm I was back playing the same game, but this time I was trying to locate a juvenile Garganey from the masses of assembled eclipse-plumaged wildfowl.

I had stumbled on the bird when scanning the margins of the pool for waders, but soon lost it when the entire pool was disturbed by the farmer and his two sheepdogs out rounding-up future lamb chops.

Fortunately the birds quickly re-settled and even more luckily I found the young Garganey amongst the first group of Teal I looked at. Armed with a Collins book I was able to nail the identity, but on closer inspection I was certain the bird I was now looking at was different to the previous one. Had I found Wally’s twin brother Willy?

I can’t be sure, but the first duck appeared to have a more obvious white spot at the base of the bill and much weaker white eye-stripes. I groomed through the remaining wildfowl but to no avail…

Great to see that work has finally started on the new part of the reserve today – the monster digging machine was in full flow this morning, angrily throwing soil across the set aside in front of the admiring wardens!

Until later.