Ely 20 May 2013

Firstly I have decided to title my blog in a different format, starting with the place we are moored at that night. I thought this may help people if they are looking for information on a particular place or area.

back to today. The weather has gone back to early spring, yesterday was tee shirt weather, today tee shirt, shirt, fleece, jacket.

We set off at 1030am and headed up the Cam. There are a couple more boats moored at the Fish and Duck but not much sign of life. Until today I had only seen a couple of Swifts, today I have seen dozens of them, probably more today than I normally see in a year, also Swallows and Martins of course. I tried very hard to get a photo of them but they are not called Swifts for no reason, I got lots of photos of sky.
This is a real haven for bird life. As we approached Bottisham Lode we spotted what we think was a Kingfisher nest and had we not been there I think it would have gone in, who knows. Shortly after that was a pair of Moorhens with 7 chicks. I don’t recall seeing that many before, they lay lots of eggs but you normally only see about 4 chicks.
We winded just below the lock as we don’t have a cam licence. The EA have drawn the levels down a bit in anticipation of heavy rain. This has resulted in lots of holes in the banks being exposed, I was wondering if they were Water Vole holes. We carried on downstream and back to the Great Ouse, the weather was still very overcast so we decided to go into Ely to moor for the night so that we can go out to eat, so far it looks as if it will be The Cutter.