Gropper

Enjoyed a wide range of Sedge warblers, heard a gropper, and saw a spoonbill, and our first house martins and swifts of the year. The avocets were grand (nearly 50 of them) and not as argumentative as usual at his time of the year.

These overwhelmingly male gatherings remind me of paparazzi flocks I’ve encountered. Like a reluctant celebrity, the Pallas’s “gropper” (twitchers have their own language, as well as paparazzi-style ripping yarns about this trip or that shot) was skulking in the bushes.