Valentines Day twitch

On Friday 14th February, after an appointment at the dump to dispose of an old garage door and gate. By 9.30am I was parking up at Carlton Marshes and walking down to Peto's Marsh, I met Jon W who said a Harrier had spooked it and it hadn't been seen since it swum back to the reeds at the back, I saw Gavin too and he passed on the same message. As I passed by the old Scrape a calling male Bearded Tit was perched high up in the reeds but disappeared as soon as I got the camera set up but a male Stonechat briefly posed for the camera on the nearby fence. Looking over the old Scrape, I saw the 2 Black Swans. Lying down by a grassy bank, one got up and walked left and the other Black Swan followed it. Rather fortuitously, as I walked down to the Mooring hide, I could see around 34 Coot all gathered and bunced together on a distant pool and the excellent winter plumaged Red- necked Grebe was loosely associating with them being just right of them! Typically mid-sized between Little Grebe & GC Grebe with a long neck yellow bill and blackish white plumage being dark black on the crown, whitish cheeks, darkish smudged sides of the neck dark back with a noticable greyish white rear fland flaring out at the back, The bird swam up the Coots, intermingled but as soon as a female Marsh Harrier came over it swam for the near reeds for cover, when the Harrier came really low the Coot scrambled out of the way and flew off. 20 minute later they were back again joined just to the right of them, the Red- necked Grebe, but a further sortie of the Harrier put paid to that and the RNG swam to the far reeds for cover. I left and walked round to the main bund path, seeing a yellow- billed Great White Egret flying left and away and 3/4 of the way down amongst some Greylag geese 2 White- fronted Geese initially sat and then they stood up and walked left feeding. I went back to the hide and saw Jane, Nick, Chris D who spotted a Peregrine soaring high up in the sky. The Red- necked Grebe again showed for a further 5 minutes this time I was able to get some distant record shots of the bird, before once again a Harrier had it once again lunging for cover amongst the reeds. A great trip, a first for Carlton Marshes and a very longtime since I last saw a RNG at Lowestoft (Mutford Lock 1980s?) which I saw with Ricky. TBC