Nod ya head, cos the Whoopers' coming!

Welney Leaders:Simeon and James 1/10/05
Unfortunaly James and I didn't have the time to go to the coast so we went to Welney to see the swans come in from the Arctic. We got there five minutes after 18 Whoopers had landed for the first time in what was to be their home for the next 6 months. We had great fun watching them each give "The signal" (Ducking their heads up and down) in turn. More and more of them wanted to leave for the fields to roost. In the end they were a group of swans ducking their heads up and down before they finally faced into the wind and took off. Other birds we saw were; several female Pintail with one male, two Pochard, one Tufted duck, a pair of Marsh Harriers, one Bewick's Swan, 25 Whoopers overall, several Teal, plenty of Wigeon, one Swallow, one House Martin, two Sand Martins, one Redshank and a few Shovelor with a couple of males still in their breeding plumage. We had about 35 species overall. On our way home we stopped off at Denver in a vain attempt to see the Red-Necked Grebe that we had found nearly three weeks back. We saw many Great-Created Grebes and at the end we were may have possibly seen the Red-NeckedGrebe. We took many pictures this day, to see the best ones just look on the gallery. Not bad going for three hours.