Wednesday July 7th

The river formed a small stream in the middle of a very muddy bed - matching the colour of the sky! We are promised rain, and the Downs can certainly do with a lot, many places are as brown as the river with the grass looking dead.
At Sea Walls a Cormorant and a Heron were on the river side, together with Common Gulls, Herring Gulls, Black Headed Gulls and a couple of Lesser Black Back Gulls, these squabbling over something in the mud.
One of the adult Kestrels sailed past on the warm southerly wind, then flew around the corner into Walcombe Slade. No sign of the youngsters this morning, they are probably over in Leigh Woods.
At the Peregrine Watch another Heron (or the same one) was searching the grass on the river bank where I suspect there are frogs.
There was one very fast fly-past of a Peregrine just in front of us. Three of the young birds were perched in a tree under some ivy, and about halfway down the opposite quarry face. Until Chris Jones pointed them out to me I had not seen them, I was looking too high up the cliff. Once visible they are obvious, especially when facing across the gorge showing their white fronts. They were moving around in the tree, so that sometimes they disappeared into the background. Chris passed another picture on to me.

Four Young Peregrines by Chris Jones, June 2010