Field Lammergeier

The wandering Lammergeier spent yesterday in Lincolnshire. I started the morning in Yorkshire and ended the day in London.  All sensible routes from Yorkshire to London pass through Lincolnshire....

Well what can I say? OK so I'd seen the bird in the Peak District in August, but that was a damp squib really. Yesterday was an altogether different experience, albeit rather incongruous to see the bird in a muddy field munching on a dead rabbit. Then again I would not call Derbyshire peak Lammergeier habitat either, but given the views I got I am prepared to accept the Lincolnshire fens as an acceptable location. What was a damp blob on a hillside was transformed into a beast of staggering proportions - dwarfing the corvids hoping for scraps. Magpies appeared as mere Blue Tits, Rooks as Robins Even the Buzzards came across as utterly puny. It flew, it glided, it flapped, it walked, it ripped up tenderised rabbit, did a crap, rolled its eyes and a whole lot more besides. In short it did everything it didn't do last time and gave the assembled line of twitchers a display none of us will forget in a while.

The only unglossy element was the pathetic parking employed by almost everyone there, turning a busy road into a one way street. What is wrong with parking somewhere safe and then walking, like Pete and I did? I do not believe in internet naming and shaming, but extra marks to the guy in the white Hyundai for whom the far side of the road was insufficient and who then moved to the near side directly opposite the bird and starting papping away, thus creating a chicane for the articulated lorries to deal with along with the single file problem. Idiotic.