February 23rd

I arrived at 8.50, conditions were dull and overcast.

I set up the gear, using  the new AV to Digital converter for the first time. This is a piece of kit that connects a Video camera to a Laptop giving you the chance to see the "live" images remotely and then the opportunity to take snapshots of this live feed on the desktop. It was  time consuming and fiddly to set up but it looks promising inspite of the low resolution of the images.

At 1003 the male appeared from upstream and landed on the waterfall. He sang for 30 seconds or so and then continued down the river. 10 minutes or so later, the female followed, also calling in-flight which is the first time that I have been certain that  females  call on the wing  like this.  Now I knew that they were down-stream together, I  expected both birds to eventually  make their way back up towards me  and in front of the nest.  This is exactly what happened but it took more than an hour. Both birds suddenly appeared and with a flurry of musical chatter from the male, there they both were on the favourite boulder at the foot of the nest.  The female immediately flew up in to the nest and the male seemed to slink away on foot down stream.  It seemed to me that he deliberately tried to keep a low-profile and this is an obvious ploy so as not to attract interest in the nest site from predators.  I never did see the female leave the nest nor the area, obviously she is even more covert than the male. About 30 minutes later they both retuned to the waterfall area right next to the hide and opposite the nest.  This time they totally ignored the nest, they fed and the female bathed.

 

The male slinks away from the nest area.

Later, they both arrived to feed and bathe, here's the male feeding opposite.

The birds don't appear to have any difficulty in finding food.

The male has a much more brightly coloured belly. than the female. He is stouter with a more solid beak.

This is the female, look at the duller plumage, much more slender shape and slighter, less heavy bill. However, without two birds to compare you would be hard pushed to seperate them.

A male Grey Wagtail coming in to breeding plumage. This bird was singing constantly all day and landed only a few feet from the hide looking for a nest site.

 

 I saw both male and female Grey Wagtail very close this morning but because I have so much kit I was  not been quick enough to take advantage of the good photo opportunities until the male perched on a clump right in front of the hide, very close. I daren't  poke the lens out of the hide for obvious reasons but managed to lock on to the bird and get some reasonably good close-ups.