Up to the highest height....

A rather quick blip tonight,as I'm about to sit down to my birthday meal, cooked by Pete.

All in all it's been a pretty busy but enjoyable day. Pete and I started off with a long dog walk around Ferry Meadows. It was cold and grey, and we decided to walk through the woods to shelter from the wind. There was a small flock of bullfinches being as elusive as ever - still no chance of a photograph. Then as we were walking along the river a woodcock shot out from the vegetation giving us both quite a shock. We usually see one or two each winter, but it's always a nice surprise.

The lakes were fairly quiet, but on the way back to the car there were quite a lot of geese grazing in the fields. Most of these were either greylag or Canada geese, with a few hybrids. But then Pete spotted one that looked a little smaller, and I photographed it with my telephoto lens to see if we could identify it. You should be able to spot it here. These turn up occasionally on local sites, but I've never seen one at Ferry Meadows before. This was nearly my blip, but as we reached the car a beautiful red kite flew over, my birthday salute!

At lunchtime Pete, Chris, Lizzie and I went up to Stamford for lunch and to find me a birthday present. I bought a rather nice lime green jumper, though I haven't tried it on yet! Then it was back to Peterborough to pick up Alex and Ben, and off to the cinema to see Sherlock Holmes. We all thoroughly enjoyed it - action packed from beginning to end and visually stunning. Amazingly I didn't even feel sleepy once, quite something for me as warm dark places are usually fatal :)