After being unwell and unable to accompany close friend and fellow birder/togger Dave Gilbert and his grandson Jenson on their first visit in late 2021 myself and Dave made a visit on Wed 5.January 2022 to Hutton near Weston-super-Mare hoping to see and photograph the three Penduline Tits that have been showing well and attracting a lot of attention recently.
After the dismal weather of recent weeks we picked the one fine day this week to make a visit and the sun actually shone for us, not that we wanted too much sun, us 'toggers' are fussy buggers !!
After some early morning birding in the Rhondda we arrived at Hutton just after 12.30pm and after a short walk from my car we 'lucked' on to one of the birds straight away as it fed aggressively on reed mace.
The bird duly obliged to show down to about 20' as it continued to feed before flying into the reedbed.
It or one of the other birds returned three times to feed at close quarters and we were both delighted with the images we obtained.
Frank Sengpiel from Cardiff had turned up 10mins before us and it was good to see a familiar face and chat, a 'lifer' for Frank by the way.
There were several 'toggers' present whom we had a good chat with and one had travelled from Surrey to see the birds.
We did see all three birds at one time although only the one came close enough to photograph.
Time passed and the light started to deteriorate as heavy clouds headed our way, we both decided that we weren't going to get any better photos than we had already obtained so decided at about 3.00pm to head back to South Wales.
This was my 4th record of Penduline Tit in the UK after the first at Slapton Ley in Devon many moons ago but much the closest to obtain good images of.............
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