Black-bellied Dipper at Ebridge Mill – History Tour & Blickling Hall NT

BLACK-BELLIED DIPPER

Ebridge Mill

I only recently discovered that my Great Grandfather Henry Waterson had painted Ebridge Mill – an oil painting found amongst my late father's belongings – on a newspaper cutting of the mill, my father had written 'painted by my Grandfather Henry Waterson...'. Although the painting is fascinating (see following post on blog), we decided to auction it off, as none of us have children to pass anything on to, so some things we kept and others have gone to Keys Auctioneers for their January/February specialist sales. I had never visited Ebridge Mill and the painting had intrigued me. How odd, that shortly after discovering this painting, that a Black-bellied Dipper should turn up at this mill!

So, off I went this afternoon to look at the mill and the dipper! There were only a handful of birders standing by the mill when I arrived. I immediately had lovely views of the Black-bellied Dipper dabbling and feeding in the river below – but rubbish for my 300mm lens. I attempted to phonescope a video, but my iphone 6 started to play up and the video mode refused to work, until I had turned the phone off and on again – I'm sure Apple does this on purpose to force you to buy a later model. Every time I buy a later model, I have to buy a new adapter for phone scoping! I eventually managed some video footage. I was lucky a bit later on as a Kingfisher appeared in the bows of the large willow tree, a Grey Wagtail flew over and a Redwing appeared in a tree! Lovely afternoon and lifted my spirits a little. It was fascinating standing next to the mill, after seeing my Great Grandfather's painting – very much modernised now, but several features confirmed the details in the painting!

Phone-scoped in poor light

Black-bellied Dipper

Sitting on the bank – honest!

BLICKLING HALL

On the way home, I stopped to take pictures of Blickling Hall which was lit up like a firework display. Lots of people had also stopped to take pictures of this spectacle. I'm at work tomorrow as normal, but have New Year's Day off.

My best pictures of a Black-bellied Dipper were taken at Thetford on 2nd February 2013.