Tuesday, Wednesday 8th, 9th January

Tuesday: warm again, I passed a Pied Wagtail on Cairns Road. They are always very tame, and I cycled within a meter of him. At Sea Walls, on the mud on the opposite bank I watched a Curlew carefully examining the mud, it strutted along the water edge, then carefully went up and down the little gullies that run down from the river grass. His head went up suddenly as a very light brown hawk, I assume a Kestral, passed over. I did not see the Curlew again, he had disappeared when I looked back. Below the cliff were a large group of Gulls, a Cormorant and the usual Mallard. Redshank were scattered up and down the estuary. A Heron flew down river. At the Peregrine Watch I could see a Peregrine perched over in the woods in a very similar position to a previous day, maybe this is the favourite spot to digest breakfast at present. Sometimes the variety of birds on view in a very short time is truly amazing, this was such a day.
Wednesday: some 5 degrees colder. Ugh! Only Redshank, Ducks and Gulls this morning, and it was too cold to linger.

Sunday 6th January

Sunny and frosty ... and my bike slipped going round a corner! No damage apart from a couple of scrapes and too my dignity; a fall brings home how unsafe two wheels can be. From Sea Walls I could see a large wader on the mud a couple of hundred meters down stream. Possibly, it was a Curlew from the way it moved, it looked larger than some gulls at a similar distance. Otherwise Mallard, tight groups of Black Headed Gulls and occasional Redshank, three Cormorants reared snake-like heads on the river. Nothing at the Peregrine Watch.