Greenshank / Redshank

I love getting a close view of a Redshank. They’re such expert alarm-callers that they were refereed to as ‘the Warden of the Marshes’ because of their behaviour of raising the alarm before other species. This time it’s different because I’m in a hide at Seaton Wetlands and they seem to have become accustomed to the minor disturbance of children yelling, prams rattling, old people bellowing about their binoculars and photographers waving long lenses outside the windows. Maybe it’s just me who objects to that behaviour rather than them?

This one is shadowing a Greenshank, as they feed together. There must be an advantage in cooperative feeding like this. Either there is more food to be found with the two of them disturbing it, where each can catch the other’s one that got away, or there is a reduced chance of being caught and eaten by a predator.

If none of that is true, then maybe they have paired together and we’re going to get hybrids sometime soon. I doubt it somehow.

It’s not possible to get to water level at Seaton Wetlands so I have to be content with a brown and blue patterned background of water reflections. It’ll do.