Spoonbill flypast
From a distance it’s hard to tell all these white birds apart. There are dozens of busy Great White Egrets and Little Egrets in the lake, which I can tell apart because of their size. However, among them is an occasional Sacred Ibis and Spoonbill.
I’d love to see the Spoonbills again. Last time it was in much better light:
Whenever a white bird flies past I have that “Oh, it’s another Egret” feeling and it’s a pain to have to check what it is. I’ve taken lots of photographs of Egrets today. I don’t need any more, at least not in this flat light.
Then we see a Spoonbill fly past. It takes a split second to register. A slight clue is that a photographer in the same hide as us, who is on the best side to see it, is already firing off six shots per second at it.
I manage to get a couple of shots. What an extraordinary bird.
Then it lands close to us and I can see how special they really are:
It’s a Eurasian spoonbill, Platalea leucorodia. It looks like a painting.