Fick fog

The Safari nothing on Patch 1 apart from the MOST monotonous Blackbird you’ve ever heard – a 1^st year bird which hasn’t learnt any exuberant repertoire yet and is singing the basic instinct song?

Patch 2 – where was it? Out there somewhere, but where – could hardly see our hand in front of our face!

The fog lifted a bit after a while to reveal a nice male Eider and a Great Crested Grebe, both possibly yesterday’s left overs. A fair few Common Scoters were close in giving reasonable views with the low early morning light coming over our shoulder.

A Rock Pipit called several times as it headed north above us, then we half-heard a clipped 'chlipp' call. As we were concentrating on the sea it didn’t really register until we twigged that if we had we been in coniferous woodland and heard that sound it would have been a Crossbill, spinning round to our left we did see a single small podgy thing bouncing along southwards above the edge of the sea wall; suppose it was one here too. It’s not going on the list but if it wasn’t a Crossbill what was it?

At lunchtime the tide was still close to the wall and deep runnels at the base prevented even wellied access so we consoled ourselves by trying some gull pics including BiF shots – don’t think we’re improving much although the light was pretty good by now. The Great Black Back was a long way away, as were the BiF shots. The sitting gulls were much nearer but the angle of the sun meant it was difficult to get a glint of light in their eyes.

The Redshank was just about discernible as such with the naked eye.

The beachmaster - would you argue with a beak like that?

 As the minutes tick by the tide edge gets further and further way very rapidly.

 resulting in ever more distant shots.

 Only just managed to get this one in frame hence the weird positioning in the pic.

Where to next? More of the same but hoping for a bit less mist and a bit more sun.
In the meantime let us know if your outback totally disappeared this morning.