Miffed to say the least but it's not all bad by a long chalk

The Safari was out with Frank on his evening walk before tea last night and a good walk it was too starting with an over-flying Grey Wagtail (116). A Song Thrush was singing from the Golden Triangle, we'd heard it from Base Camp in the morning and  it was now giving it some serious welly...Did he do it, did he do it, did he do it? - Of course he did he did he did! Just brilliant to listen to, far better than having lordy knows what musically bellowing in yer lugs from your earphones - the real sounds of nature are far superior to anything we can produce, well almost RIP Paco. We'll have to dig out the old cassette tapes we have of his and have a special listen. Now if young  HW learns to play like that!!!

Sadly there was no sign of the Peregrine on the tower, not seen it for a few weeks now, must be due to put in an appearance soon. There was however a Goldcrest calling in the Philadelphus hedge making its way towards the now felled Leylandii trees in the big garden. Not a bad wander round the first bit of Patch 1, good job it's still light after work.

Later, after tea Twitter was being filled with astounding pics of the Aurora Borealis including some from south of us. We just had to get out and have a look. Our northern horizon isn't good and the light pollution is far from ideal - not to worry we must have been the only place in the country where it wasn't just cloudy it was flippin raining! We peered out several times without any success all down to cloud and or rain.

We reckon this pic from ©NASA has to be pick of the bunch

Beyond totally awesome - isn't the natural world brilliant! We're quite surprised by all the light pollution from the North sea oil and gas rigs between Shetland and Norway.

This morning the Song Thrush was at it again, we stood listening while also standing staring at the Land Rover - all that flippin rain had blown over and the skies obviously cleared to allow this to happen, Only scraped ice off the windscreen a few times this winter but this is the first time we've seen the ice patterns like this this winter.

Like we said isn't the natural world brilliant.

The day went a bit downhill after that with reasonable numbers of Common Scoters seen at sea but little else.

By lunchtime the sea had calmed down to almost flat calm and the numbers of Common Scoters now went up to around 1000. In the middle distance a female/immature Long Tailed Duck whizzed northwards. Two Razorbills were best of the rest. The dropping tide didn't seem to be leaving much in the way of a shellfish wreck as the numbers of interested looking gulls was way way down on yesterday.

All in all an interesting 24 hours with some great sightings but mixed emotions - isn't the natural world brill.

The Badger cull seems to have been denounced as an abject inhumane failure, even being adjudged so on the #Torypoodle BBC News - lets hope it truly is dead and buried for good in all shapes  and sizes.

Where to next? The weekend might offer an opportunity of a safari or two somewhere.

In the meantime let us know what's brilliance the natural world has offer today in your outback.