I decided to take time out today to write a post. Much the same as always, I stocked up the feeders early morning and huddling my cup of tea I did the head count. Today is the first day for a long time that we have had 4 Long Tailed Tits feeding. There have only been two for a while now. The number of Swifts is increasing too. I saw my first two over the house early last week and the count now is 12. After I came in Trevor went out and within minutes I heard something that made my heart sink. It was Trevor sounding like something awful had happened… “Oh no… oh no, no, no…” I raced outside and he looked devastated. He had been watching the Wren, who has been spending a lot of time in the garden lately. It wandered along the fence and onto next door’s fence. The cat from next door but one must have been hiding, as, in Trevor’s words “it just appeared from nowhere and snatched the Wren”. I just hope that Wren got away; I have to believe it did.

I then went out to get Molly some sweets and chocolate. She loves fruit jellies. I visited her (in the residential home where she is staying) before heading out to her house to sort a few more things out (you can collect a lot of “stuff” in 88 years, and at this rate Molly will be 100 before we are finished sorting it all out!). We didn’t go for a walk in the garden today; it was far too cold for Molly, and me, truth be told. We sat by a window and talked, but we still managed to see a Green Woodpecker, Great Tits, a Nuthatch, Corvids, Swallows and a Buzzard!

I managed 20 minutes at Porthpean late afternoon. The sea was choppy and it was blowing a hooley! I could hardly keep the scope steady. I heard a Chiffchaff and saw GBB Gull x 3, Gannet x 5, Fulmar x 23, Great Northern Diver x 3, Cormorant x 3, Shag x 1, Sandwich Tern x 5, and just before I was planning to leave I spotted two back dots on the horizon, which appeared to be heading towards me. I watched them getting closer and closer until eventually I realized they were Swifts. As they got closer to land one took a drink from the sea, and then headed in towards Par. It was lovely to see them arrive. A very special moment and much needed after the sadness of the Wren this morning.

One of our garden Wrens…