randombirder

Garganey , wood sandpiper , greenshank , cattle egret , great egret , crane , bittern , bearded tit , marsh harrier , hobby , great reed warbler, cuckoo, turtle dove  and red-footed falcon ; all within 50 minutes of my front door. A lovely day out in The Fens - Ouse Fen, Berry Fen, Fen Drayton - and a trip over to Swaffham Priory Fen for the red-footed falcon. Just glorious.

So this was my annual trip to Poland - a necessary venture to visit my partners parents and to do the right thing by escaping into the countryside after approximately two hours.  I say annual - it should be really but last year it didn't happen which is a real shame.  Because - this is a really great place to watch wildlife - the people are really very congenial, the food is actually extremely gratifying if you find the right places, and the beer flows like water at the fraction of the price of the UK, and is twice as refreshing. And then there's the wildlife.  The habitat is vast in comparison to what we have here, agriculture untouched my artificial farming practices that have seen the demise of many of our farmland birds, and areas of marshland that make the Cambridgeshire fens look like a suburban garden. We took a walk along the Augustow Canal on the first evening from the  Kaktusik Hotel  where Great Reed Warbler were cronking from a modest reedbed. ...