Before I came to Peebles, I have never seen a goosander before. Nowadays, I rarely walk by the Tweed without at least seeing a long female floating by or a group diving together under the water, but I'm still delighted every time. However, I've never before been close enough to get a decent picture.
On 26 December, I took Ellie to Greenside Bridge to feed the ducks. To my surprise and delight, in addition to the obligatory mallards and gulls, we also attracted a small group of goosanders - four males and four females. I can only think that the onset of winter and shortage of food has made them more brazen than usual.
The goosanders, in fact all the birds, went for the bread aggressively and chased or fought each other off to get at every morsel.
Best of all, the goosanders were close enough for me finally to get some shots:
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| Female Goosander [December 2012] |
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| Male Goosander [December 2012] |
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| Female and Male Goosander [December 2012] |
The black-headed gulls also came up close enough to get snapped.
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| Black-Headed Gull [December 2012] |
We managed to get reasonably close to a heron before Ellie got a little bit too interested in it and it flew off under Tweed Bridge!
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| Grey Heron [December 2012] |
There was also a moorhen but it was much too shy and I stood no chance with my 5x zoom of getting a decent shot.
Before we headed back to the car, I took the opportunity to spot some ash trees, using their winter buds as a guide - I've only just taught myself how to identify ash! There were quite a few ash trees actually and I took this photo which I'm quite pleased with:
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| Common Ash Winter Buds [December 2012] |
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