Almost too bright and sunny

The Safari went out on to a somewhat noisy but cold (-4C) Patch 1 and for a change the noise was more avian than human. Nice to hear three species of thrush along with the Robins and a Dunnock all getting into the Spring swing of things despite the bone-aching cold. The count at magpie Wood was again hampered by bad light 44+ Magpies beginning to stir as the first hints of daylight oozed their glow over the eastern horizon.A brief moment of excitement was had during the morning commute when a huge flock of Starlings flew over us from their roost on the pier, they took almost a minute to pass overhead - how many? Anyone's guess but 10s of thousands - and that was from the smaller of the two pier roosts unless they've swapped.

A good day for Common Scoters but not a lot else. We reckon a conservative 5000 out there today – the difference to other recent smaller counts being today’s flat calm sea making them much more visible.

A few Great Crested Grebes but not much else to warrant putting finger to keyboard.

The brief lunchtime safari gave us two Sanderlngs (down one on the morning safari), four Dunlin (up one on the morning safari – did a Sanderling morph into a Dunlin perchance?) and a handful of Redshanks; less than the morning session when 13 were counted.

With little to tell you about enjoy these geese pics from lat weekend courtesy of our Extreme Photographer. You should be able to use your skill and judgement to identify three species. No peeking at the post labels - now we've said that you probably will!

The last one shows Frank in his most usual mode – sniffing...and his ever-present companion in his most usual pose – binning...both look as though they need to lose a few pounds/kgs!!!

At the end of the day we were in the garden measuring up for a bit a project when we came nose to beak with a Long Tailed Tit - nice but no camera and you can't take a pic with a tape measure! 

Frank sure knows how to make himself comfy in someone else's house!

Where to next? At Base Camp tomorrow starting the aforementioned project.

In the meantime let us know if the sun shone too brightly in your outback