How nice-not as exciting as a new c-ring combo, but after more than 50 years on and off watching godwits at Stutton Mill something interesting has popped up. If it sticks, will prob feed on Essex shore on falling tide, back to Suffolk a couple of hours after low and into roost.

Brent RDNK still playing it cool behind the Co-op tonight. Quite a thought that a heavily upholstered black goose has has now experienced 30 degrees C in both the UK and Siberia.

Every cloud has a silver lining- here's about half of flock of 175-200 Swifts lumped by the rain and cold onto a farm res. in the Brecks this afternoon.

Tackling the thorny question of when a footnote should go before the punctuation rather than after. Top answer is about birds, but not by a birder I suspect.

greeted by a Ptarmigan on the veranda when we got back to the hut from today’s wadering in Iceland

Dragged out owling by @stuttonsparrows in Constable country and ironically my thermal makes Stratford st Mary church look like it was painted by Turner instead.

Time to call a halt on a paint of a juv Roughleg boinging up and down on thin thorn branch before I am tempted to tinker about with it. I miss these chaps more than any other mild winter no-show I can think of.

The usual parade of the faithful on the godwit front- here's Woofer still with some moult to go. Well over 90% of the c-ringed godwits since beginning of Feb have prev. history on the river.

A quick skid of ink over some Knot feeding back-to-the wind on Thursday. Might need to invest in a thinner brush.

All very exciting- maybe the object which shifted my Knot flock off this bit of mud this morning came from further way than I appreciated at the time.

I can't keep up with this weather- filthy now but here's an Avocet on the Stour at teatime yesterday in clear and calm looking more than a bit @richardallenart

I've been trying to get this old Knot with faded flag read all season- finally brought to book in the last of the light this eve as it pottered about in the godwit roost behind the Co-op. Turns out it is my old mucker LUP ringed as a 3CY+ in 2009. So now in its 20th year+.

First trip off patch up the Suffolk coast for ooh i dunno how long this AM- here's at Chinese Water Deer and a Tundra Bean Goose sticking their heads up at same moment.

Not sure if taking dodgy record shots is genetic, but just got some nifty pics from my non-birding daughter of Buller's Shearwaters knocking a heart-shaped hole into a baitball.

flat calm once again on the Stour - GND in the reflection of the clocktower

Just to share the joy of a drake Smew on patch at Alton- the last one a few years ago had felt like a last chance to see already. Not the full set of white head plumes on this chap, but pearls of water on its back when it upped from dive.

Great joy to have R N Grebe in the mighty Stour area this afternoon (ta @ESBR_Essex) - here's a pencilling of its head shape when it rested between feeding sessions a metre from shore.

Still tiddling about with GND images from earlier in the month- a happy thing is that they have black stripes down the quills of their axillaries (armpit feath'rs) like the splayed slats of an Adirondack chair

Lovely Barn Owl asleep in the sun this morning with tsil fanned and primaries resting on the deck