Thursday 15th December

The last couple of visits to the Meadow have not produced anything of particular note apart from the fact that the floods are being nicely extended by this spell of long-overdue and much welcome rain. Today when I arrived there were some people out on the point who I think were analysing the water table. As a consequence all the ducks were over on the east side and there were no gulls to be sign. I therefore decided to have a quick walk through Burgess Field to see if I could find any SNIPE or woodcock. The best I could turn up was a single one of the former but at least by the time I returned to the floods the men had gone and the gulls were coming back in. Two YELLOW-LEGGED GULLS was the best I could do - I'm still keen to find the first Caspian of the season.

I suspect that people are growing tired of constant grainy yellow-legged gull video (can't understand it myself) so here's a shot of some of the roosting duck at dusk. I rather like the lines of cloud drawing your eye to the centre of this picture.