Alpine Swift

This morning Bun and I left Seaton quite early to go to see some Mandarin Ducks  in South Devon. Although I have seen Mandarins before I can't for the life of me remember if they were wild ones or not, they could have been in a park or even  in a 'collection'. The four we saw this morning were I believe wild, they were certainly very wary, and didn't like being looked at in the least! This is why I only got this appalling snapshot of one of the drakes.

 Mandarin: Belatedly on my life list.

While we were here news was breaking of an Alpine Swift on patch, in the Musbury area. Oh well, we thought, 'you win some you lose some'  and weren't  all that fussed about rushing home. On the way back we heard that it hadn't been seen for over an hour, but just as we were approaching Seaton it was refound, in much the same location as before. We went straight there, (well, after a quick detour to pick up Phil) and were soon enjoying 'good'  but very distant views until the bird appeared to drop down out of sight towards Bruckland Ponds. We relocated to the ponds ( along with many others) and immediately got some much better views with the bird making a few fairly low passes over the ponds. Most of the time though it was viewable distantly over the Musbury Castle area.

Patch, Devon and even Somerset birders enjoy the Alpine Swift at Bruckland Ponds

 I didn't think I stood a chance of capturing it at all with my super slow focussing S3. In the end I only managed to take two shots 

This one was more than a bit naff...

...This one wasn't.

Whilst the Swift wasn't showing, I was distracted by this boring old Mute Swan, the lovely catkins of the 'pussy willow' and the singing Willow Warblers.

A tranquil spring scene, you'll have to imagine the Willow Warblers though.