8 January 2020

· Wirral ·

An afternoon working on my Darwin book in the car, parked at the edge of the Dee Marshes at Gayton. I did pretty well (800 words), despite the distraction of pink-footed geese constantly on the move. There were also hundreds of woodpigeons. I’ve never seen so many together before. A kestrel spent a couple of hours perched atop a red water-channel marker-post. Little egrets flew by every so often, spooking geese and redshank. The way egrets tuck in their necks in flight can make their heads look rounder and surprisingly owl-like. Perhaps the spooked birds thought the same.