I had an hour walking the Roding today whilst my car went through it's MOT and added a couple of LD2 ticks with Kingfisher, and Common Gull. Water levels are high on the river but it was a very pleasant stroll and I'm pleased to report that the car made it through without too much drama.
In the afternoon I headed down the road to Gunpowder Park again arriving around 2pm. There was around twenty five birder/toggers on the hill awaiting the arrival of the star birds. The crowd was well distanced but I thought that may change if the bird arrived so I left and decided to sit it out alone at the bottom of the hill on the main path. At around 3.30pm I saw a single Owl flying high on the ridge towards the crowd but decided to stay where I was and it paid off as the bird eventually gave me two good views. The light was poor with a very dark cloud overhead and the hill shading the meadow too but I grabbed a few shots by squeezing the ISO all the way up to 16000 which still only allowed a shutter speed of 1/800th.
As I've said before any sighting of any Owl is worth the effort. I put three hours in today for two minutes with the Owl and I'd do it again tomorrow without hesitation with the hardest part being how to keep that social distance with others and some of the others have smaller boundaries than what I'm comfortable with so I take my dancing shoes and keep shuffling to maintain my space.
Before I left I had another LD2 tick with fly over Shoveler and had decent views of Sprawk on two occasions too. Again the Jackdaws and Parakeets entertained vocally as they came in to roost.
LD2 LIST 65
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