A nice winters day....

The day started with heavy rain and a strong wind, but this soon eased to a calm day with patchy sunshine.

As the sun rose, almost our first bird of the day was a first winter Glaucous Gull flying into a group of Great black backed Gulls on the Coquet Estuary. It was a real lunker too, in flight equal to the Great black backs. It only stayed for about 15 minutes just giving us time to go back for the camera before it flew off north. It probably roosted on Coquet Island with the other gulls and came in to the fresh water to bath and drink. 

Also here were 3 Black tailed Godwits and the usual selection of waders. We checked up at the harbour to see if anything else had arrived but it was very quiet. The Eiders looked nice in the calm water, when not fighting for bread, so I took a few snaps. 

I like this one. It is a full frame, uncropped pic. 300mm with 1.4x converter f7.1 , 1/320, ISO800, as the bird steamed towards me.

While wandering the harbour, a Snow Bunting flew along the north pier and off north along the beach. 25 ish Whooper Swans were along the river in fields opposite the wier.

From here we checked the north side, old water area, where a nice Kingfisher gave us the runaround on the tiny trackside pool by flying off and returning later when we tried to get a photo. I think John did ok.

And that was that really apart from a few Long tailed Tits and me knocking my glasses off never to be seen again, a typical local winters day. We do alright here if we can get a nice day...