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Message: <blockquote data-quote="halftwo" data-source="post: 1343554" data-attributes="member: 45720">Don't Believe The Weather ReportThe Met Office Radar claims no precipitation around here - but let me tell you oh, weathermen: it aint stopped all night and all day.Maybe the rain's so fine (that's as in size, not as in good) that said radar can't tell it from the clouds above. Anyhow: it's raining. Typical on a day off.But I digress. Into the grey and murk a birder must go - OK, it's not compulsory, but this is a calling.So 'twas with despond at the fore when the day was brightened and enlivened by a Mediterranean gull. A Common gull (rare enough here) put me on to it; there it was, briefly bight and blood-red-billed besides its commoner cousin - before flying off. Quick phone call to report this minor rarity, and onward under asbestos skies.Not far off two first year sibling Kestrels sat on the same telegraph pole - one male, one female, looking tatty in the rain, still keeping each other company all these months on.And on along muddy tracks churned by tractors, into a tiny valley, thronged by thrushes. A hundred each of Fieldfare, Redwing and Starlings sailed down from berry bushes to bathe in a puddly meadow. Goldfinches on thistles added to the colour. A formation of fourteen Golden plover streak overhead. And once more down to ditches, searching for the creeping and the cryptic, but clearance for drainage had reduced the habitat to vegetationless runnels.By the sewage works, pushing through seven-feet-high stinging nettle stems, a single Woodcock gets up to give one poorish view. Much effort for little reward. Goldcrests flit from willows. On the settling beds several Pied wagtails;  a Buzzard above.Rare gulls again: four Herring gulls are passing. A Bullfinch, unseen, whistles sadly somewhere. High in an oak a Treecreeper hisses and a Jay screeches.Back over the brook by way of a fallen tree which arches high above, as a Sparrowhawk spooks the flocks.  Over the canal four Mute swans contrast white against the grey sky as they commute to other waters. Two more Kestrels, adult pair this time, circle me  as I reach my own full circle, much muddied but unbowed.</blockquote>

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