I only had an hour, but luckily I was already close to the forest. My senses were not deceiving me and I was near a small hidden clearing in the forest where there are a few water holes – no bigger than garden ponds – that I had discovered last year in autumn. The sun was already low and the fresh, green grass at the edge shone magnificently.

There was a Mandarin duck swimming in one of the lakes and something bright in the water next to it, which at first I thought was a thick birch branch. Looking through the telephoto, I saw that the branch had two strange, very symmetrical little cantilevers…. Wait, those look like bird legs an the feathers fit to a female mandarin duck! And indeed the male seemed to be guarding her.

It turned out that there were two males, but it was the one that kept coming back and was occasionally chased away by the other one. I have no idea what really happened here; probably a case for the bird CSI…. but the light was great and even dead water birds look elegant.