Quiet Evening

I happened to coincide this afternoon's visit to the Tower Hide with 11 other people. One of them was very small, and sporting a full nappy. Nice. Two or three others were young lads, who were actually quite interested in having a Med Gull pointed out to them. One of them even noticed that the egret on the far side had a yellow bill, and said so in a way that suggested he knew it was significant for some reason. Although I suspected he'd probably guessed its identity anyway I told him it was a Cattle Egret, and a great bird to grip off his mates at school with. "Mega! What a stonking crippler!" was not actually his reply, but he'll get there I'm sure...

It was quite encouraging to see a bit of interest from the very young - I despair at the ubiquity of grey heads on the current birding scene.

 Aren't they small!

There were at least 4 adult Med Gulls present too, one with a red ring but too distant to read. I sat it out until dusk. There was quite a strong SSE wind brewing up, and it was very soothing to watch the trickle of gulls sail downriver against it. Nothing upset the nicely chilled ambience, but you can't have gullish thrills every day, and anyway there's a whole winter yet...