A local told me that they have a Painted Snipe at Fivebough. Well, ho-hum, doesn’t everyone? At the present time the striking feature there is the number of Spotted Crakes that are becoming habituated to the intermittent observer stream. I counted 20 over 4 different sites. There were 10 scurrying about like rodents over the drying mud near the western hide - together with a couple of shyer Baillons. A problem with photographing them - and other things at Fivebough - is the ‘Fivebough Fog’- the semi-obscuring effect of the tips of the screening Baaliyan. This gives rise to the effect shown in the spoonbill photo below. This plant is over 2m in places so it will be a tall photographer who can get an unobstructed view over it. Early one morning I found an elegant male sparrowhawk at his breakfast beside a path.
