When I visited the Peacock bird hide, from which there is a view over the large lagoon, there was a group of birdwatchers gathered together at one side of the hide with their scopes and cameras with very long lenses trained on one area. The excitement was that there was a lone Redshank on the site! They very kindly pointed it out to me - letting me look down the scope and one even took a photo of the landscape on his mobile phone so that I could locate the area for myself.
I was not surprised that I had a hard time finding the lonely Redshank as it was almost hidden in the shrubbery!
The Redshank was some way in the distance, the photographs were taken using a long lens and then have been quite heavily cropped.
The birders sat and watched the one and only Redshank for some time and it just kept sitting there behind the shrubbery. Eventually they gave up and went over to the other side of the hide and started watching something else. I thought I would take one last look at the bird before I left and it had actually stood up, was preening it's feathers and gave me a view of it's red legs.
Then it very kindly put it's head up so I could take this photo.
The Redshank then walked off across the lagoon until it was even further away from the hide and posed gracefully between some plants that were growing in the water. There was a Lapwing on the land in the background. Both birds are reflected in the water.
I had gone to Barnes hoping to see a Redshank, but did not realise that there would only be one visiting the site that day. I was incredibly lucky to have seen it and have to thank the lovely birdwatchers in the hide for pointing it out to me.
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