What a smashing outing that sounded like John. It's good that your dogs are getting along well too. Your neck of the woods sounds ideal for birding. Wish it was as good here down south. Think we're too built up. My daughter and I went out too a place called Horrid Hill. But it's not horrid just quite flat because it's the start of the convergence of the Medway to the Thames. Salt marsh and brackish water. It was very windy yesterday and we saw lots of blackheaded gulls, oystercatchers and some birds took off that i couldn't ID. They took off in formation -4 of them- were mainly black with a dab of white on the wings. They looked like some sort of duck but I've looked through my books and can't find a match.
On the way home we saw 2 young dead
Badgers by the wayside which was very sad to see.
Back home in our garden the greenfinches,goldfnches,sparrows, starlings and one lonely little female siskin were still busy feeding.The sparrowhawk comes down often, sits on our fence but tends not to kill in our garden.
Looks like another nice day. I'm going to check out the blackbird nest to see how they're getting on. Happy Sunday. ww