Alison

I have, as I think I said, been re-watching The Affair. the main female character, played by the excellent Ruth Wilson, is called Alison.

That is not completely irrelevant information.

At the Reserve we were concreting in slabs on which the new accessible hide will rest. A young tern sat for much of the afternoon on a buoy, as if watching us. I pointed it out to my photographer friend Dave and he managed to get a fantastic shot of a parent feeding the youngster a fish.

My lens does not have quite the zoom potential as Dave's, but I figured I may as well have a go.

This happened, somewhat annoyingly, before I had managed to change the light settings. Consequently the image is not great.

Once I had changed the settings (ISO and aperture), I got better images, but the mother bird would not come back. In fact, she just teased the baby with that fish in the image above. Maybe my presence was disturbing her.

The kid went away... but soon returned. She seemed to have developed a liking for this particular buoy. I said to the other volunteers, "See! It's my friend!"

"What's its name, then?" one asked.

And, yes, I shot back, "Alison!"

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In the absence of a parent bird, I made do with a passing Canada goose. The two birds completely ignored each other.