Back home in Norfolk!

A four-day trip south to Maidenhead was enjoyable, relaxing and bird-filled. The numbers of both Red Kites and Ring-necked Parakeets seem to have increased recently: there were never less than three Kites loafing around over Mum-in-Law's house, and everywhere we went we saw plenty of them. This was even more the case with Ring-necked Parakeets: we heard / saw flocks of them at Boulter's Lock, Maidenhead, Savill Gardens, Virginia Water, Bray and Slough.

Highlight of the trip was, of course, the adult drake Ring-necked Duck that took a bit of locating at Bray: I finally found a reference to its whereabouts on a Berks birding blog and connected with it at a range of perhaps a hundred metres. It's been around for at least two Christmases!

The weather all Christmas was overcast and drizzly, necessitating high ISOs and slower exposures than desirable: many of the photos below were taken in near-dark, hence the grainy results!