Third time lucky indeed.

The Safari's late night Patch 1 walk didn't give us the Peregrine but we did find this juvenile Hedgehog which was dangerously near the road. As we approached it curled up into its ball. We took the picand waited...sure enough he began to unfurl, first a snuffly nose...

followed by his face
We gently picked him up and placed him under the bushes. Those spines are sharp! He was a bit on the light side so we hope he can feed up and reach the 600g weight necessary for a successful hibernation.
Patch 2 was forsaken in favour of Chat Alley at dawn. Nothing doing at all in the persistent drizzle. The notebook didn't even get the place and date written in it until nearly the very end when we took Frank for a play on the beach. It was here, over an hour after the start and the best part of three miles we heard our first migrants, a couple of unlocated Meadow Pipits, then a couple of 'alba' Wagtails, followed by four Meadow Pipits in-off. A few more Meadow Pipits were heard. Now did passage not start until 08.00, or did we miss it because the hood was up against the rain, or was it out of earshot over the beach? When we were thinking all was just about lost we saw the flit of a small bird on the sea wall with no white rump so not a Wheatear...hopes were up...but it was a Robin, almost definitely a migrant.
The only other thing of note was this 2/3 of a Lesser Spotted Dogfish (aka Small Spotted Catshark) found on the cliff top.
Did the gulls drop it there or has a fisherman just thrown it away on the way home?
Next it was off to the estuary to nail those Curlew sandpipers. With having a day off we could chose to be there at the right time of the tide and we were soon successful (180). As the tiide started to rise two Curlew Sands joined a throng of Redshanks roosting on the higher parts of the mud flats. Useless photographs - sorry - forgot the camera has an anti-shake mode and after a long spell of sunshine as soon as the camera left the pocket it went back behind thick clouds.

This second year Mediterranean Gull was one of three seen, an adult and a 1st winter being the other two.

Lapwings, Redshank and Golden Plovers were numerous.

We had a small number of Dunlin too but they were too lively to allow the decent comparison pic we would have liked.

Have a blimp at this very shaky bit of digi-vid - - it was a tad windy out there and chilly to in the brisk northerly.

Where to next? Cetacean surveying on the big boat over the weekend - see ya Sunday evening with news of Fin Whales, Orcas, Sooty Shearwaters and the rest...hahaha

In the meantime let us know if your outback produced the goods today.