Bearded tit at Leighton Moss

Bearded tit on grit tray on the fringe of the reed bed

Just look at the colourful plumage of this bearded tit.  The bright orange bill, the dove grey head and those long black moustachios down over his white breast.  His mantle is a warm russet-orange and his wings are streaked with white and black.  A strikingly handsome bird well-lit on a day of cloudless blue sky.
In spring, he feeds on insects.  In autumn and winter his diet is reed seeds and grit in this feeding tray is an aid to digestion.  The RSPB  entice the birds out of the reeds for us to admire. 

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Bearded tit is a life-tick for Liam and he could hardly have seen the bird in better conditions. Here's the bird  in changing postures, to show  his plumage. Mustachios rather than a beard.  Bearded tit, also known as bearded reedling since the reed bed is its habitat.  I hear the distinctive call, and we first pick up the bird foraging on the fringe of the reeds. The birds eat reed seeds, make their nests from reeds and are hard to see because they spend their time deep in the reeds.  To show off this special bird the RSPB have feeding trays and a camera trained on them.   

A flotilla of coot came swimming across the water, an adventurous leader in the vanguard. Their white bills and forehead shields made a distinctive pattern against their grey/black plumage.   Some sixty birds, at least.  When they came to an island of black headed gulls they climbed up and displaced the gulls.  After a while the late arrivals decided to head back the way they'd come.  And in a great rush they flapped and paddled on the water, all in a flurry so sudden we didn't get the photograph. Too quick for us.  Coot gather in large flocks in autumn and they make a striking spectacle.
I came to Leighton Moss hoping for fieldfare and redwing, having found them on Scout Scar the previous day. But could find none.  The surprise was this large flock of coot, following their leader, settling on the island, unsettling and off in a whoosh and vanished.  You can predict according to the season, so far. But what you see and what you don't is often about coincidence.  We came upon the bearded tits at an opportune moment, might have waited about for hours and seen nothing. 

There were berries of hawthorn, of guelder rose and spindle.  And catkins of alder and birch.  Witch's broom shows well as birch lose their leaves in autumn.
Listen to Vivaldi's The Four Seasons and the music suggests each season is distinct. Nature isn't like that.  One season flows into another.  Take alder trees, for instance.  The dark and brittle cones are the fruit formed during last summer and they linger through the winter.  Before the summer is over you'll find catkins forming in readiness to overwinter, for next spring.   Catkins appear on birch too.  I like the delicacy of birch and its contrast with the dense mass of alder cones and catkins. Both alder and birch assume a purplish tinge in winter.