Northern on the North?

As promised Bill Eggleton dropped us in his further excellent otter pics - both from midday last Saturday:

And also this morning when the obliging beast spent 20 minutes fishing in front of the hide (at 5:30am that is).  Remember to visit at this time you need to be a member - and also keep really quiet to respect the patience of others who are there at such an ungodly time! - well worth it though:

Plus nice roe buck:

However for me these were not the highlight - Bill has a lot of pictures on his memory card including many of long tailed tits resident around the North Marsh - including one with 'a really white head' taken last Saturday the 12th:

The bird certainly has plenty of potential for a northern race caudatus type:

It could just be another aberrance that plague us at Tophill, but the colours look a bit too well defined for an accident.  There is a hint of dark in the lores which suggests an intermediate type from Central Northern Europe - but it seems lighter than just a straight caudatus x rosaceus.  As you can see it is seemingly collecting food - suggesting it is rearing young.  So presumably we can expect plenty of hybrids to entertain us in the coming weeks...now we just have to refind it!

Bill also sent us pictures of the last osprey on the weekend of the 5th / 6th May:

That is until today when this one came over D res:

Along with its band of followers:

 It dropped onto the shooting pond at Struncheonhill at 15:30.  Until 16:30 today we had also had common sandpiper and dunlin reported on a dismal day.  Finally we are going with sanderling on Tony's wader from last week based on scale against the curlew.