1) Find a suitable stretch of water. Hickling Broad on a day when WVBS are visiting is a good choice.2) Spot a blob with your binoculars which could be a bird on top of a post in the middle of the Broad

3) Find a helpful companion with a telescope and train it on the bird

4) Agree that it has a blackish-brownish body with a light head, and is about the size of, but doesn’t look like, a female marsh harrier, which is flying around nearby.

5) Try to get a better look at its head, which is difficult as it has its back to you, although it is turning round to preen its back. Decide it has a brownish stripe through its eye, or above its eye, like an eyebrow (supercilium to those who speak posh).

6) Turn to bird book

7) Bird book shows an osprey has a similar head but has white underparts.

Bird turns around to make faces at a cormorant flying by. It has wide dark wings and white patches near the top of its legs. Bird turns its back on you, raises its tail and gives an indication that it has fed recently. It had a very dark rounded tail.

9) Decide a third opinion is needed

10) Third opinion looks and considers; bird continues with its back to onlookers. The back has a greenish sheen with a dark line where they overlap in the middle.

11) Third party proclaims an osprey

12) Fourth party arrives as osprey turns its head sideways to give a lovely profile view.

13) “That osprey has a ruddy long beak” fourth party comments.

14) Second much larger book is consulted.

15) Continental cormorants have white heads with black markings, and have white patches at the top of the legs in the breeding season.

16) First, second and third parties get ribbed about any cormorant-like bird that might be an osprey for the rest of the day.

17) Website consulted the next day indicates that continental cormorants may have infiltrated the large breeding colony near Colchester. No, it wasn’t an osprey!!