I didn't sleep that well last night: for some reason I woke up at 3 a.m. and in the end it took a couple of hours and finally a quickly-downed large glass of wine to get back to sleep. Once I was finally back under I was dead to the world and I slept through our alarm this morning. The reason for the alarm was that we needed an early start as we were going to head up-county to meet my VLW's niece who'd just had her second daughter. Finally awake, there was just time for a quick wash and breakfast before heading out. Whilst getting ready, I did grab a few moments to stare out of the window at the glorious weather to see what bird life there was this morning. There was a lovely flock of 30 or so Linnets in the field next to the cottage and the two Ravens were back on their favourite perch by the stone wall.
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| Local Linnets |
By 9:30 we were off and on the road only to receive a text that the niece was running a bit behind and could we make it a bit later? As it turned out this suited us well as we could then pop in to the Cambourne B&Q en route to pick up a few things that we needed for the cottage. As I have blogged about before, it's a crying shame that the PZ B&Q closed - there's now no where local to source things like this any more and we now need to grab opportunities like this at Cambourne when we can. We got most of what we were looking for there and then headed on to meet up with the new family member who seemed a bonnie wee girl and we passed a pleasant couple of hours making her acquaintence.
By the time we left it was getting on for lunch time so we decided to pick up some sandwichess on the way back and to head over to Marazion beach to eat them. We did nip into St Erth as we passed in order to have another go at the Cattle Egret but once again all I could find were its commoner cousins. Marazion was gorgeous and bathed in beautiful sunshine and we passed a pleasant hour or so munching on our food and messing about on the beach. There was a nice flock of 100 or so Sanderling, looking for all the world like little clockwork toys as they ran about on the beach. I didn't bother scanning the sea as at this timeof day I would have been staring straight into the sun from this vantage point.
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| Marazion Sanderling |
Next my VLW wanted to pick up a few things in PZ so we parked up near the bus station and I scanned from there (as it was a better angle for the sun) whilst our son L clambered about on the rocks. There wasn't much to see and the best I could manage was the usual drake Eider, one Guillemot and a couple of Razorbills as well as a couple of Rock Pipits in amongst the rocks. My VLW returned to report that most of the shops that she wanted to visit seemed to be closed already, some sort of local early closing "dreckly" concept I suppose.
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| Tolcarne Eider |
Next it was on to Newlyn where she had a few more shops to visit. I did a flying stop at Jubilee Pool to check the Battery Rock beach where there was a nice little mixed flock of Dunlin, Ringed Plover and Turnstone but sadly no Purple Sandpipers. At Newlyn we parked up at the Tolcarne Inn and whilst my VLW pootled about in the shops, L and I went to look at the harbour. There were almost no gulls about at all though L very much enjoyed looking at all the ships and has now decided that he's going to buy himself one when he's grown up
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| Newlyn Turnstones enjoying some spilt food |
Finally with time marching on it was over to Mousehole for the Rock Pool Café. More precisely, the other two went to the café whilst I joined the small party of St Clement's Island gull roost watchers in the car park. There was MA, ME, MJS and RV, the latter being a young lad who told me that he read my blog (nice to meet you!). It was really slow going with the roost this evening and I was soon longing for the other two to come back from their post-café walk into the town so that I could get out of what had suddenly become rather biting cold. Just before they returned I managed salvage something from the session when I found the first winter Iceland Gull on the rock. I was just getting the others onto it when my party returned so I took a quick bit of record-shot video and then went to join them in the sanctuary of the car.
Then it was back home to the warmth of the cottage for a bite to eat and a chance to put our feet up in front of the telly. It had been a very relaxing day with remarkably little DIY at all. My VLW and I both remarked that it seems rather strange just to be down here enjoying ourselves rather than rushing about doing various tasks but I'm sure that we'll get used to it. The weather is forecast to be pretty reasonable tomorrow as well so I suspect that there might well be more time spent outdoors enjoying ourselves. Long may it continue!
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