Hard Time Being A Common Tern

Back to wandering around my favourite bits of Surrey today with Graham. We started at Tices Meadow, a stunning, compact site near Farnham well watched by it's regulars, of which I am not one. A gorgeous drake garganey kicked things off nicely but two other birds stick in the memory. Firstly swift; I don't really know how many were arcing there way through the skies above Tices but my view seemed to be full of them, a truly brilliant sight. So why is life hard for common terns? I witnessed a bit of pair bonding, a male feeding a female a nice fish and both looked pretty pleased with themselves. Almost immediately however, the female was besieged (if you can be besieged by one bird) by a black headed gull, chasing the female relentlessly in an effort to get the tern to give up the fish. This time, the tern kept its meal but having to go through that all the time must be hard going.
On to Thursley where we were looking particularly for redstart, of which we found none! Other regulars were however present, including, cuckoo, dartford warblers, a single lesser redpoll and what might be Surrey's only breeding curlew, displaying and sending out that amazing, evocative call across the common. Regulars that I managed to photograph included woodlark and of the two photos I present here, one is just because I like the effect of the squiggly bits of powerline.

Tree pipit is another Thursley regular, not that this one was all that confiding. They do possess another of my favourite songs and when seen well, are just very handsome, neatly turned out birds.

We finished our trek, inevitably, at Papercourt, circumnavigating the water meadows with the highlight undoubtedly being two stunning hobbys, seen well both in the air and perched. Not seen well enough to photograph however!

Otherwise, warblers are always strong feature here and whitethroat, chiffchaff, blackcap, reed and sedge warblers all made there presence felt across the water meadows.

Garden Warblers are difficult to photograph and this one was not all that helpful but being set against the hawthorn(?) flowers helps.

Last time I gave you Beautiful Demoiselle, this time I give you banded demoiselle. I don't know what it is eating, happy to hear from anyone that does.