Cyclists and Hobby Day at RSPB Langford Lowfields

I cycled out to Langford yesterday, arriving through thick clouds of common darters. It seemed other cyclists had the same idea for a fair weather jaunt, one was parked up as I arrived, and another turned up and did a circuit of the reed bed later on. Plenty of other folk out on the Sustrans 64 too, taking in a fine day at various speeds.

There was a couple of egrets on view, lots of tufted duck, and a pair of great crested grebes with a chick with an attractively cute stripy face - very late in the year for raising young.

There was a fellow there doing an all dayer with his 60x60 spotter, and I enjoyed the pleasure of his informative company as he called out the birds on the islands in the reed bed that I had no chance of seeing with my feeble 10x50s... "Sedge warbler...willow warbler..."

Compared to the 'proper' birdwatchers, I'm a rather poor specimen.

Having wandered off for a look at Phase 2, and admired as always the prehistoric sigh of a heron in stately flight, I went back to the hut and together we watched a very busy hobby in action hawking the still numerous darters and migrant hawkers out of the sky. The hobby is a beautifully narrow winged falcon, with a powerful yet delicate flight that somehow reminded me of the pulsations of a swimming jellyfish. At one point it startled a trio of seagulls, which shrieked in alarm before sending one of their number off to try and mob it out of the sky.

Such a swift bird, the hobby. Look away, and its gone. Then it will appear again at high speed, out of a completely different part of the sky.

No hovering like a kestrel. The hobby is always on the move.

Phase 2 reedbed

The back of Phase 1

Looking back towards the beach hut

Knapweed, I think

Male common darter on the path

A Hobby - Today's Big Attraction

And what came out to feast on the dragonflies? While taking in the sun and scanning the trees behind the hide I noticed a falcon rising up from seemingly the farmers field - where there had been a lot of clanking and whirring from some sort of baler or harvester - and then disappear out of my view as it headed out behind the tall hedge onto the river end of the reed bed.

Ach, probably another Kestrel, I thought to myself.

But then looking out from the hide, it suddenly veered into view high from the right, not hovering like a kestrel and with I think a slimmer body shape with narrower tail and wings, sickle like wings in fact.

Very evidently it was hunting for prey on the water, until as it made its way round to where the RSPB hut was, it suddenly stooped, dropping like a stone almost onto the water, a process it repeated a couple of more times as it followed the water course away to the left.

I've read about it often enough, it would appear that finally I've seen the Langford Lowfields Hobby.

And not before time, it can't be long before it scuds off down south for the winter and was presumably stuffing itself with dragonflies by way of preparation, which are very numerous at the moment.

It wasn't done with me, as I cycled back up the path it was working over Lake 1 before heading into the wood. Excited, its a magnificent fast flier, it seems to be barely moving and then you realise its another hundred metres further away!