Glossy Ibises Bolton : 20th October 2013
Glossy Ibis, Bolton
I had been following the presence of four juvenile Glossy Ibises on “Bird News Anywhere” for a few weeks and we even went to the fields at the back of Bob’s Smithy Inn (at 1448 Chorley Old Rd, Bolton BL1 7PX ) on our way up to Scotland on the 2nd of October. That time we had been unsuccessful even if we did meet some other birders also looking for them. This time we were luckier. We parked in the lay-by on Walker Fold Road – an incredibly busy road for a country lane and quite dangerous for the inattentive. We spoke briefly to another birder and he pointed to the four birds at the far end of the field. With the scope at full zoom they gave a reasonable showing but it got more interesting when we decided to walk around in front of the pub and walk up the road to the footpath that comes along the far side of the field and which we hoped would give us close views hidden behind a low stone wall.
Things were not that straight-forward, however, because as we walked up Chorley Old Road the birds took off. We thought, with sinking hearts, that that was the end of them but we could not have been more wrong. The birds wheeled around in the sky above the field in formation, crossed above the road but then wheeled back again and kept going around and nearly landing. This gave me – and another photographer – a fantastic opportunity to get flying shots of the birds. Even better, when they did decide to land they landed much nearer where he had been before, So we rushed back around to where we were and the birds were happily feeding quite close to us and progressively they edged nearer and nearer firstly, to the point where you could not get all four into the same picture, then, next to where it was hard to get two of them in the one picture. I was using my 500mm lens but the other photographer had abandoned that for a 200 – 400mm zoom lens !
Eventually a call of nature made it necessary for me to visit the pub where I also found that they sold Timothy Taylor’s Best Beer – my favourite and rarely found anymore. By the time I had sampled the beer and Anne had eaten a quick snack we returned to the field but the birds had already gone. I wasn’t too concerned however because we had already binned, scoped and photographed them for easily an hour.