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Spadger

Today was a day of incessant sleet with occasional snow flurries added to the mix and a damned cold wind. The sudden cold spell brought a few common gulls back to the school grounds today, outnumbering the herring gulls and lesser black-backs. The gulls either stayed on the rooftops of the school buildings or milled about the school yard except for two black-headed gulls that settled on the field for ten minutes, decided they didn't like it and retreated to the nearest rooftop, leaving the field to the jackdaws and woodpigeons. In the back garden the spadgers spent all morning in the bushes, emerging onto the feeders every time there was a lull in the weather.

For all the cold weather the magpies were still flying around with nest building materials, the robins still sang in the gardens and the blackcap still sang in the pyracantha bushes at the station.

When I nipped to the shop for a loaf it occurred to me that I should have been out birdwatching, I've been out in worse than this. Then I remembered I'd been out in worse than this and it wasn't clever. By teatime the wind was still fierce but the weather was otherwise merely very dreary. If it stays that way in the morning I'll assay a trip out.