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We noticed a horizontal crack in Bessie’s windscreen emanating from a spider shaped ding – luckily near the bottom – and concluded that this was the result of a sharp noise we had both heard driving along the day before.  Hopefully it won’t travel too quickly across and we can wait until we get home before we get it fixed.

As predicted, today proved to be a lovely sunny and hot one and we headed down country a bit to the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust centre at Welney, situated in the Ouse Washes.  This is fen country and the centre was down a very long straight straight stretch of road with wide skies and a lot of water.

The visitor centre was quite a new wooden structure – very smart and well designed, with a lift to the upper floor which led to a long wooden bridge over the marshes.  This led to a large and very modern observatory, under the eaves of which a large colony of house martins had made their home.  Hundreds of them were constantly flying here and there, backwards and forwards, so fast that it was difficult to take photos of them – more difficult than you can imagine.  Out on the main lagoon were Little Egrets, Tufted Ducks and some Avocets, with a colony of Swans in the distance.  A herd of cattle made their way slowly across the surrounding meadowland.  We spotted a lone Pied Wagtail making its way along one of the little islands, eventually stopping to enjoy a sand-bath.

We walked along the track, stopping at various hides along the way – some of them like little Nissen huts with low doorways and just meant for two!  We couldn’t see a great deal of birds but saw a few butterflies and dragonflies along the way.  At one hide Peter was lucky (and observant) enough to see a reed bunting in the reeds and took some good photos of it.  I saw a Reed Warbler but it was impossible to photograph as it was constantly being part hidden by the reeds.

Towards the end of the afternoon we found a hide which looked out onto several lagoons and there we spotted some Tufted Duck, Little Egrets, Shelducks, Coots having a fight, quite a few Bewick’s Swans and a pair of Garganeys, one of which made a spectacular landing on the water which Peter was clever enough to photograph.

A quick re-visit to the Observatory at the end of the afternoon rewarded us with the sight of a Great Crested Grebe and a Reed Warbler flitting about in the reeds of the little island.

We had an elongated trip home as we had to make a detour because of an accident on the railway line but we managed to find a decent mobile internet connection beside a McDonalds in King’s Lynn to enable me to put the photographs on our blog!