A double whammy with big smiles

The Safari didn't get out yesterday after a good friend's 50th resulting in a very late night and a skinful of beer, no we didn't sing!

We did do the Big Garden Birdwatch but our hour didn't produce too much, half way through we were upto the grand total of two Woodpigeons and a Robin. The second half was a slight improvement with two Great Tits, a Coal Tit, a Magpie, a Blackbird and on the garage roof after scraps, a Herring Gull.

This morning we did our weekly Goldfinch survey, finding not a one and only singles of Greenfinch and Chaffinch, a very quiet morning until a Carrion Crow came in, a rare enough event in itself but then it started to grab great beakfuls from the suet block hanging low down in the Crab Apple tree - wonder how often it does that when we're at work, we very seldom see them venture down into the garden.

Once breakfast was made and chomped we got out to the nature reserve, parking up we put on our wellies and turned to see a small red and white fungus growing in the crook of an Elder tree at the edge of the car park. On closer inspection the white bit was a covering of mycellium, is it part of the red fungus or is it devouring it?

At the reserve gate it's a choice of straight on or right, today we chose right and went to the Feeding Station first which was very quiet considering it was quiet chilly.

From there were continued round to Ice Station Zebra, living uup to its name today with the cold wind coming through the windows. As usual there was a good selection of waterfowl on offer, scanning through the Teal for a vertical white stripe beyond them was a smaller white duck, not a duck at all on closer inspection but a Little Gull (95, MMLNR #65). Something flushed the ducks but it stayed put close to the far side.

The light was simply dreadful

From there we moved down to the Bird Club hide where the usual suspects were on offer. We could still the Little Gull down where we'd come from. We hung around a while watching a small number of gulls coming and going but there was nothing of note to report to you.

From their we decided to nip up to the cottage where there are a few Tree Sparrows to be seen around the feeders in their garden. Once we'd crossed the bridge a familiar but very out of place sound caught our ears - was that a Bearded Tit we just heard? More pinging - by crikey yes it was!!! We didn't see anything more than a bit of an inconclusive flit along the back edge of the reeds but the distinctive pinging went on for about 30 seconds...Bearded Tit (96, MMLNR #66) on the list - get in. The last we saw here were at the end of the 1990s, not sure if there have been any since then. We walked up and down the reedbed but saw and heard nothing more of them - it sounded like there were two (or maybe more?) birds calling.

On the way to the cottage we passed a clump of Daffodils flowering cheerily in the winter gloom.

At the cottage a short wait brought good views of a couple of Tree Sparrows (97, MMLNR #67). They were too flighty for pics.

Returning to the nature reserve we took a detour round the outside to have a look to see if the Long Eared Owls were on show, one was easy a second was quite tricky being well hidden behind the twigs and branches a little higher up and to the right. No pics today - you've seen enough dodgy Long Eared Owl pics on here already.

By now it was raining pretty heavily and was even gloomier. We walked back along the embankment naughtily playing Bearded Tit calls on our phone, there was no response but it the phone isn't that loud and the strong wind was blowing the sound in the opposite direction.

Back at the hide the Little Gull was seen on the scrape and it didn't look too good. But another something flushed the ducks and it lifted and joined the other gulls bathing on the water allowing nearer but only slightly better pics.

Lovely little bird, hope it's OK and just needs a bit of a rest before heading out to sea again - it would do well to stay a few days as there's more atrocious weather on the way this week.

As the light faded 41 Grey Lag Geese came in and with them was everyone's favourite feral the Bar Headed Goose.

The rain came down and it was time to head back. We stopped in the Feeding Station but still little action apart from five Moorhens??? Still no Reed Bunting for us. No Mistle Thrush either despite having a good look at the flock of Fieldfares in the far fields that they often join and driving up to the posh hotel where they are regularly seen on the grass verge...but not by us!

You see what you see when you see it and you can't see everything all the time, and if you don't get out you won't see nowt - that's guaranteed!

Where to next? more wind on Patch 2, will there be any Little Gulls out there?

In the meantime let us know who turned up unannounced in your outback.

Gotcha you sneaky bush sneaker

The Safari has been trying to keep an eye on the Blackbird that has been collecting worms. Not easy through the office window which has a rather limited view. Today we had a bit more time available for serious 'outside' looking. We'd been over to Patch 2 but abandoned ship as the waves started to splash over the wall well before high tide, so we swapped scope for camera and took a slow stroll round the gardens. It was no good, we could see the Blackbirds and watched them carrying worms back to the scrub but they never stayed out in the open long because of the constant stream of dog walkers. We ran out of lunchtime and had to prepare for our school group who were due in an hour or so. Luckily once we'd got all their kit out and prepped up the dog walking circus died down and the Blackbirds were staying out longer...

They were very wary and wouldn't allow a particularly close approach if they had any food collected.

We watched him back to the densest part of the hedgerow where we had no chance of seeing how many youngsters were being fed. Behind us we saw the female also collecting worms and she disappeared under the nearby Tamarisk shrub bed which was much more open underneath. As she went in another movement was seen, it was the/another youngster!

It's certainly an unusual sight but not totally unprecedented Blackbirds have been known to nest in every month of the year but January's probably not their favourite. We don't recall ever seeing a fledgling Blackbird in January in our nearly 50 years of wildlife watching. Lets hope there's not a serious cold snap around the corner.

Our school group arrived on time and after a few preliminaries started their observations, first off was the temperature - a globally warmed plus two degrees above the long term January average 9.3C on the field and 'in the shade' too, it was totally cloudy and despite the high temperature the wind felt really this arvo. 

Once the science was completed it was time to find if anything could be found in the crystal clear 6.3C water. 

It didn't take long for the first creatures to be brought to the surface, not surprisingly 3-spined Sticklebacks were captured first.

The were soon joined by front swimming Water Boatmen of varying sizes.

And they were joined by a multitude of snails including the empty shell of a large Ramshorn Snail.

A couple of back swimming Water Boatmen were also netted, they're hard enough to find in the summer here!

What a great gang of kids and hardly a moan about the cold.

Where to next? Hopefully Patch 2 will be come back into play tomorrow and the wind might just have brought something interesting within reach of our scope.

In the meantime let us know who's got themselves out of of seasonal synch in your outback.

Surrogate herbivores in action

The Safari has been rumaging in ther phot archives for management pics taken at the nature reserve, here's a couple of oldies.

Cattle?

Moose?

Where to next? Hopefully the tide won't be as high and the wind so strong so a lunchtime visit to Patch 2 can be made tomorrow.
In the meantime let us know who's chewing their way through your outback

Rewildling the nature reserve

The Safari hasn't been able to get out on Patch 2 so far this week, busy, duff weather and high tides have conspired against us. We tried at lunchtime today but only got as far as the front door when we saw huge waves crashing over the wall close to where we stand - that was enough to have us wimping out and fleeing back inside. Yesterday we did have a fly over Pied Wagtail (P2 #30) and a couple of Grey Wagtails while out supervising with our gardening volunteer.

From our previous post - The story of the wetlands is a story of rewilding and an attempt to prevent it becoming too wild. They were dug about 10 years ago, maybe more now as time flies when yer aving fun. Locally there's a population of Great Crested Newts that can always do with a helping hand and there's the other amphibians too. They like a bit of open water with some vegetation but without some intervention open water doesn't stay open very long as more and more vegetation arrives and grows. We are now at the stage where open water is at a premium and the poor old newts and their friends are running out of places to lay their eggs. 

Indeed the slightly less wet areas are now being 'invaded' by Willows so increasing the drying out - in time they'll be out competed by Alder and perhaps eventually other tree species. But we don't want that, we want our amphibians to do well so we've made a conscious conservation decision to halt the rewilding, succession is being stopped and if possible reversed a little back to some open water. The whole wetland could do with a little mowing (in the absence of grazing) if it were safe to be let loose on there. A robust pony and tougher old breed cattle would create open water, maybe prevent too many Willows growing and perhaps encourage a better diversity of wildflowers on the grassland - provided they weren't overgrazed. Sadly no chance of that so its muscles and tools and we could always do with some mechanisation to 'keep on top of the vegetation' - darned succession goes too fast for us. Rewilding it would seem is only going to work at large scales with a fully functioning ecosystem, small suburban areas will need some form of conservation priority (for a particular species or habitat almost arbitrarily deemed more important than any others) and management to hold the inevitable succession at pre-determined point.

The wetland on its opening day in 1997 - About as unwild as you can get

The point being that the work party volunteers are acting as a small population of very selective grazers/browsers would in a much larger ecosystem if there was a legitimate reason for them not to go there often so as not to overgraze/browse. That could be down migration routes/times or the presence of predators that deter but not totally exclude the grazers.

The reserve as a whole is an interesting example of rewilding with some conflicting species/habitat dynamics going on. There is a comprehensive management plan for all of the reserve broken down into several compartments with rotational treatments for the different habitats, reedbeds, grassland, scrub, woodland so that not all the same habitat gets managed in any one year so a patchwork of different aged and sized patches develop. But due to increasing lack of non-capital funding, machinery and a sufficiently large army of volunteers over the last couple of decades or more despite the will to do the management prescriptions it has not been possible to keep on top of the long list of projects required by the plan. That doesn’t mean the reserve is not in a good condition, far from it as it is an SSSI and has only recently been re-assessed as ‘Favourable’ for both its features of interest – Standing Open Water & Canals and (Lowland) Neutral Grassland.

This has resulted in many parts of the reserve looking nothing like what they did when the site was first designated as an SSSI way back in 1979. With the lack of grazing/mowing (although we did somewhat unsuccessfully try a bit of grazing a long time ago) there has been a succession from shorter more open grassland to ranker perhaps slightly less flower-rich grassland with some not insignificant Bramble development. We think part of the problem may arise off-site in the form of increasing nitrogen deposition from the air which enriches the soil allowing longer grasses such as False Oat Grass and Cocksfoot and other tall plants (often perceived as ‘weedy’ eg Nettles, Thistles, Willowherbs)  to out-compete the lower growing plants. This increase in ‘rankness’ may have contributed to the extinction of Small Heath and Wall Brown butterflies. Having said that Gatekeepers, Speckled Woods, Large and Small Skippers were unknown here at the time of designation so the losses have been more than counter-balanced by the gains – would be better if we could have all those species though.

Part of the opposition by ‘land-owners’ to rewildling is their perception that the land will turn to ‘useless’ scrub – well of course it will but then scrub is not useless, not from a biodiversity  point of view as it provides shelter, flowers, increased structural diversity so more ‘niches’, builds soil (from leaf-fall) and more…what they really mean is they can’t make any money from it, that’s probably what they are afraid of. But as can be seen on the nature reserve scrub is only another step on the journey through succession. 
At first it can appear to be ‘invasive’ smothering out more ‘interesting’ vegetation and species. In the old days there was less dense scrub and more Whitethroats but no Long Tailed Tits, Lesser Whitethroats or Blackcaps. Since then the trees and bushes have grown in some areas and begun to shade out the earlier successional Brambles. In the absence of sufficient volunteers and or cattle, Red Deer or Wild Boar to break up the thickets of Brambles it does appear that they are taking over areas of the reserve becoming a mono-culture and they are out-competing some of the more ‘interesting’ plants. Volunteer parties have recently 'become' the large herbivores and broken up some of the stands of Brambles to give the smaller species a fighting chance. Some of the trees have been pruned (equivalent to being broken by passing Wisents?), some have been coppiced and the brash piled up (similar to Beaver activity although the piles are on land not in the water). All that’s missing is the dung, but then as we said earlier there is nutrient deposition in the form of atmospheric nitrogen but that doesn’t help the dung beetles does it…and then species that eat dung beetles at the various stages of their life-cycle…what was it we said earlier about fully functioning ecosystems?  
Wild Boar would be great to have around the place grubbing up tasty Bramble roots, disturbing the soil allowing the seed bank to germinate, or perhaps not seeing as the reserve is on a former landfill site bringing more rubbish to the surface to be taken away. Not sure if the neighbouring golf course would be too chuffed to have their greens and fairways excavated, they'd have to go to the expense and inconvenience of securely fencing their perimeter - wouldn't do that would just apply to shoot the boar it's sooooo much easier to get rid of inconvenient wildlife than mitigate against it....isn't that so Badger cullers?

As for predators it’s unlikely we’ll ever get anything bigger than an Otter, (Fox on land) or a Buzzard, and they're only recent colonists. We can’t see anything as exotic or exciting as a Lynx turning up their within our lifetime unfortunately - go on bite the bullet get them reintroduced asap - and as for Wolves, well we can only dream but there is no prey for them locally….no they don’t eat cows very often not even in the USA apparently (eg 2.5 million cattle in Montana, 35 attacks in one year by 600 Wolves not all fatal and even fewer on sheep). What chance a Golden or White Tailed Eagle ranging over the nature reserve – no chance they can’t get past the grouse moors of southern Scotland to reach England, even the (fairly) locally reintroduced Red Kites (a scavenger not a predator) haven’t reached us yet – wonder how many of those have become ‘disappeared’.

If we did ever get more than the occasional visit from Roe Deer and excessive 'damage' to the vegetation started to be an issue there wouldn't be any predators eat them or move them on so us humans would have to take the role and that emotive word 'cull' might have to come into play. An unlikely scenario as all the unleashed dogs act as predators to keep prey species 'disturbed' on on their toes.
The reedbed areas similarly need breaking up and are difficult to manage with specialist machinery especially in deeper areas...we're thinking Moose! Be great to have a couple of those sploshing around creating open water patches for the amphibians and dragonflies etc and lots of reed edge margin for the Bitterns to fish in as well as forcing channels through the reeds for the fish to move along.

It would seem we're missing an awful lot of exciting wildlife but whatever it looks like now and however wild, rewild, or unwild you think it might be it’s deffo worth a visit as there’s a tremendous variety of exciting wildlife to be found at all times of year, most of the ‘small stuff’ we don’t even have a clue about.

Then we learn that the Glenridding Hotel is flooded yet again the 4th time this winter; if ever there was a time to seriously consider rewilding and mega tree planting on large areas of our National Parks this has to be it. The catchment for Glenridding is about 10 km2 (4 sq miles) and there's barely a tree in sight. Trees won't stop flooding altogether but they can slow flows and reduce the peak water. It's surely time the general public asked farmers to farm water and wildlife as well as sheep and cattle - we need them more than the little meat they give us from the marginal 'agricultural' land. The government need to set policies and incentives for farmers to be able to do just that. Trees in the hills what will The Ramblers say?

On this map there are place names of deer, Wild Boar and Heron (?=Erne = eagle) hint's of what used to live there and perhaps could again some day soon.

Any thoughts on any of the above anyone?
Apologies for the dodgy formatting - not sure what's going on there, been a nightmare!
Where to next? More rain, wind and wave wimping on Patch 2 probably
In the meantime let us know how wild your outback is being allowed to get.

Rewilding, succession, conservation = a bit of a dilemma

The Safari was out at the nature reserve all afternoon firstly joining up with the conservation crew removing Willows from the wetland. They didn't get done last winter and so are bigger and more strongly attached to the substrate requiring plenty of combined digging and muscle-power to get them out.

So why take all the effort to get rid of them, surely they are good habitat for a multitude of niches for tint mini-beasts and larger vertebrates too?

The story of the wetlands is a story of rewilding and an attempt to prevent it becoming too wild. The were dug about 10 years ago, maybe more now as time flies when yer aving fun. Locally there's a population of Great Crested Newts that can always do with a helping hand and there's the other amphibians too. They like a bit of open water with some vegetation but without some intervention open water doesn't stay open very long as more and more vegetation arrives and grows. We are now at the stage where open water is at a premium and the poor old newts and their friends are running out of places to lay their eggs. 

Indeed the slightly less wet areas are now being 'invaded' by Willows so increasing the drying out - in time they'll be out competed by Alder. but we don't want that we want our amphibians to do well so we've made a conscious conservation decision to halt the rewilding, succession is being stopped and if possible reversed a little back to some open water. The whole wetland could do with a little mowing (in the absence of grazing) if it were safe to be let loose on there. A robust pony and tougher old breed cattle would create open water, maybe prevent too many Willows growing and perhaps encourage a better diversity of wildflowers on the grassland - provided they weren't overgrazed. Sadly no chance of that so its muscles and tools and we could always do with some mechanisation to 'keep on top of the vegetation' - darned succession goes too fast for us. Rewilding it would seem is only going to work at large scales with a fully functioning ecosystem, small suburban areas will need some form of conservation priority (for a particular species or habitat almost arbitrarily deemed more important than any others) and management to hold the inevitable succession at pre-determined point.

We could only stand and point rather than do any proper work like we used to be able to get stuck into. We did carry a few light twigs - a lot lighter than those the Boss is hauling - but that was more than enough for us.

A Sparrowhawk )MMLNR #61) flew by and a tromp round the other ponds with MJ gave us four Snipe, two Meadow Pipits and a couple of Dunnocks but no Jack Snipe.

After the work party was over we went for a wander round the reserve. We spent some time in the Feeding Station watching the several Blue, Great and two Coal Tits. A Moorhen was with the Pheasants, two Grey Squirrels and a Rabbit on the ground mopping up the spills from above. No Reed Buntings again though.

From their we went to bother the Long Eared Owls of which four had been reported earlier. AH and IB were putting all the day's tools away so we stopped for a chat and as we did so a Woodock (94, MMLNR #62) flew low past us, probably disturbed from its roost by a dog which was where were it shouldn't have been.
Only the way to the owls we found another Blackthorn in flower.

We could only find one owl but were able to put a visiting birder on to it. Then we went to have a look over the water and found another family with a youngster with 'Christmas-new' binoculars and walked round with them to show them the owls, this time TS had found a second for them. We've spared you anymore dodgy Long Eared Owls pics this time. 

Next we had a look to see if there were any early Bee Orchid rosettes showing, there were - we found two, in the 'usual' place.

The mere held a good selection of ducks which were disturbed by a Heron and filled the sky as they flushed - an impressive sight. 

We learned we missed a Mediterranean Gull once we got back to Base Camp, hope it wasn't hidden in that big flock of Black Headed Gulls we worked through as they flew over the mere without stopping.

And so another great day at the nature reserve came to an end...actually we needed a brew otherwise we would have held on for an other hour or so to see if the Barn and Little Owls came out to play.

Where to next? Back to Patch 2 tomorrow - what will we find, owt or nowt?
in the meantime let us know who's poking through the soil in your outback.

A look-see on the beach

The Safari has had a look through hundreds of rubbish pics of murmurating Starlings, this one is one of the few keepers, like we said that Peregrine needs to earn its keep and get them to bunch up tighter.

We've also been looking at some of the climate facts n figures for town now that the year has rolled on. It's important to realise that one place doesn't represent the whole planet so don't be going drawing any conclusions about your own neck of the woods from our figures.

We'll start with daily maximum temperatures - and we're only doing temperatures we don't have enough rainfall figures to do the comparisons.

Also be aware that we shouldn't be comparing 30 year time-spans with a 10 year time-span.

The most obvious thing is how similar the last 10 years have been to the late 20th Century - no sign of any warming. In fact if you look at August and are over 30 years old it's true that summers were warmer in the old days.

The daily minimum temperatures are completely different and we'd say statistically significantly so! Apart from March there's no overlap at all!

So why aren't the night-time temperatures leading to warmer daytime temperatures - cloudier so that more heat is trapped at night but also meaning the sunshine can't get through during the day??? Your guess is as good as ours as to what's going on. What's going to happen in the next 20 years, where will those green lines be then?

Today we had a look for the potential nestling-feeding Blackbird but it was nowhere to be seen in the heavy rain this morning. 

The sea was a washout early on we lasted only two minutes before deciding it was too wet and visibility too poor in the low drizzly cloud. Lunchtime was drier but now there was a crazy 'heat' haze going on - it was worse than summer! But we did feel a bit of warmth in the sun which helped make our mind up about getting down on the beach.

Wellies on and off down the steps we went.

The strong low sunlight was very harsh. We soon came across some of the goodies left by the ebbing tide. First onto the memory card was a clump of Hornwrack, looks like seaweed but is actually a Bryozoan, a tiny colonial animal - you can see the empty individual holes of each animal in the second pic

A few paces further on we found a Mermaid's Purse, the egg case of a Lesser Spotted Catshark, we didn't see it at the time but from processing the pic it looks like there might well be an embryo inside.

A movement in the nearest pool made us squint for a closer look and we saw a flock of a dozen Redshanks roosting up. They are wary birds and wouldn't allow a close approach, if we'd have had a bit more time we might have laid down an inched closer on our belly for better shots.

We pushed our luck an foot too far and they flushed up on to the wall some yards further down the beach.

We were now close to the reason we wanted a look on the beach in the first place. To have a look at what the pipe engineering works have left behind and it wasn't good. The beach sand level is well down and has exposed a large amount of rubble and shingle.

It doesn't bode well for our school groups coming down to investigate the rockpool wildlife. All the lower pools are filled with shingle. We don't allow the little ones to climb the wall for obvious reasons.

Where there was life has been scoured clean by the action of the shingle in the waves, the stonework has been scrubbed clean, even the Barnacles have been removed.
And if a rock is thrown higher up onto the Sabellaria mounds it doesn't do them any good at all, they act like grindstones.

To say we're not happy about this sate of affairs is a big understatement - how can it be rectified, the sea might be able to fill the pools very easily but it's not going to be able to get the stones out is it?

To take the edge off our extreme disappointment we continued to look along the strand line. 

It didn't take long to find something a little different, a Blunt Gaper - don't see too many of these so after getting pics we pocketed it for our collection.

Also found was a fresh Rayed Trough Shell, still with both its bivalve halves stuck together and still its original unbleached pink colour.

Pretty good for a 20 minute saunter, shame about the ecological calamity, that wasn't foreseen or mentioned in the Environmental Impact Assessment document we've got on our desk.

Where to next? We'll be somewhere out on safari at the weekend and then there's the small matter of another Goldfinch survey.

In the meantime let us know who's to timid for a close approach in your outback.

Murmuration magic

The Safari has just seen the final results for last year’s Patchwork Challenge Inland North sub-group. We didn’t do too badly in the end coming in at 17^th and only really visiting with any regularity after the demise of poor old Frank in the summer and even then only really once a week – some folks must be visiting their patches (or working at them) much more frequently making it slightly easier to record more species.

Our final position (the league being contested by number species) was 17^th with 109 species earning 124 points working out at 1.138 points per bird (PPB). 
Turning it around a bit if the league had been contested by PPB we’d have come in at a slightly higher 14^th.

We missed a few species but probably all those would have been 1 pointers so perhaps could have maybe increased by one place in the main league (bearing in mind everyone else will have missed stuff too) but we’d probably have dropped in the PPB league had such a thing existed.

For this year we’ll just have to find a couple of three (or more) pointers to keep in with a shout.

Today we were at Patch 2 again but there was little on a rather murky sea and as far as we could see there were fewer Redshanks today with only 25 counted, but there could have been some out of sight below us at the base of the wall. There weren’t very many gulls and even fewer Oystercatchers.

Back in the office a Blackbird out on the lawn outside the window caught our eye – was it really carrying a worm? We went out for a better view but didn’t see it. Later, once back inside we saw it again and with a colleague confirmed it was taking beakful’s of worms back to a nest – in mid-January…what’s going on??? While we watched we also saw a Robin, a pair of Dunnocks and a site record two Wrens together in the hedge! Certainly an interesting and exciting couple of minutes.

At lunchtime the sea was similarly dead to earlier but we did find a small flock of 12 Turnstones and saw a distant flock of nine Sanderlings land on the freshly exposed wet sand as the tide ebbed further down the beach. With little to enthuse us to stay longer we went for another look for the Blackbird but again didn’t see it but there were a few dog walkers about now. Back in the office we looked through the window after an hour or so at our desk and there he was again and once again had collected a load of worms, the female was out foraging too. With milder and wetter weather forecast in the next few days it’ll be interesting to see how the nest fares, it would seem that the eggs/young have survived the coldest days of the winter so far. At least they should have no problems with collecting worms from frozen ground for the foreseeable future. We’ll have to see if we can we locate its whereabouts, we think it’s in the hedge just round the corner along the side street just out of view of the office window. Further and more detailed investigations are required. Might even take a bucket of water out there to rinse the windows and we need to remember to take the camera to work, the range is just a bit too far for the phonecam. 
We did take the camera to work today and almost got the first ever pic of a Song Thrush at work but a dog walker appeared and flushed it an instant before we pressed the shutter.
The sea gave us nothing, although DG informed us that the fishermen are catching Whiting so there ought to be a Harbour Porpoise or two about. She also told us the Peregrine was back on the church tower this arvo.
That was enough to send us back to Base Camp early so as we could get back out to the Starlings - we were there yesterday too, with CR. There was a grey out with no hint of horizon betwixt sea and sky.

The Starlings began to come in in huge flocks of several thousand at a time - this is a small part of one of those flocks.

A fair crowd had gathered to watch the spectacle, on our side of the pier there were at least 20 folk with cameras, no idea how many if any were on the south side. 

It was a great spectacle 

Today couldn't have been more different, not a cloud in the sky!

 And a bit of a sunset began to develop illuminating the little shrimping boat working the tide.

 The Peregrine was still on the tower in the town centre too, a little too far away for a proper pic.

It stayed up there, wasn't interesting in the huge amount of meat on the wing, probably already stuffed full of Feral Pigeon or catches the Starlings when they leave the roost at first light - Once again there were a few people gathered for the evening's performance. 

More Starlings came in than yesterday, perhaps as many as 50000! But the murmuration was quite small, most of them landing on the beach as the tide was out. Until they were flushed by a dog walker that is.

Sunset mode on camera for this one and the one above

 We were even serenaded by a wandering minstrel this evening - it all happens here!

Didn't know you could play the guitar with frozen fingers - it became really cold once the sun had gone down!

Tell you what though- there must be some tonnage of Leather-jackets being consumed in farmers' fields around the county at the mo to keep that number of Starlings well fed


   Where to next? School group attacking the pond tomorrow, hopefully before the rain starts and we'll have another try for that worm collecting Blackbird.

In the meantime let us know who's got their breeding season all about face in your outback.