Safety in numbers

Just when I finally began to beat the cold I developed a fortnight ago (which I'd feared at one stage might need medical intervention), I layered a new one on the top of it, courtesy of the Boy Wonder. This one hasn't caused the same hideous throat as its predecessor, but is producing gallons of irritating mucus, and an near-constant cough that had me (and doubtless R as well) awake for much of last night. Thus today I was Grumpy, Barky, Snotty and Wheezy - and probably a couple more of the Septic Dwarves as well, if I could be bothered to put a bit more work into the analogy. There is a slight upside to being as ill as this, which is that my immune system is so busy it's temporarily forgotten about my joints - but nonetheless, it's a good thing I love the little man as much as I do, or we'd be having Words.

Anyway, today I found myself caught in the bind of feeling too ill to go out but too irritable to stay at home, so I compromised and went to Stratford, which is so close that it really hardly counts as going out at all. I headed straight for Holy Trinity church yard, hoping to track down the goldcrest I spotted there yesterday (just in time to capture two blurry shots of its disappearing backside: the story of my birding life). I didn't find it, and nor did Merlin pick up its call, but given the relative sizes of a goldcrest and Holy Trinity church yard this wasn't surprising, and I found enough other wildlife there to get my photography day off to a decent start.

After I'd finished working the church yard I wandered along the river to check the tufted ducks, and discovered that yesterday's twenty two had now risen to at least thirty one. They were in fairly well spread groups, and at any given point some of them were diving, so they were quite hard to count; but I made it to thirty one three times, so that's the number I reported to Birdtrack. This is the largest concentration of tufties I ever remember seeing in Stratford, and I assume that they must be gathering for the northward migration back to their breeding grounds.

By this time my cough had cleared a ten-foot exclusion zone all around me, and rather than inflict it on a captive audience in a café I bought a takeaway coffee and a vegan sausage roll (don't judge me if you've never tried one), and enjoyed a cold but sunny picnic lunch in the Bancroft Gardens. I then went back to the river to take another look at the ducks, and realised that there was one group of nine birds who were sticking tightly together near the lock bridge, and looking far more nervous than all the rest. I felt a little smug when I spotted them, because it's reasonable to assume that they were new arrivals overnight, and thus responsible for the sudden uptick in numbers, and I was confident that they justified my tally.

There's something about this accumulation that makes me think of the way mediaeval pilgrims would meet up at particular inns on their pilgrimage routes, joining together into larger groups for protection against the many hazards of travel. But in truth I don't think it works like that with birds. It's much likelier that with the wind having been largely in the north over the past ten days these little ducks haven't wanted to attempt a sea crossing, so they're coming together and waiting at places with other ducks, safe water, and a reasonable supply of food - of which this stretch of the Avon happens to be one. It's looking as though the wind will stay northerly for much of the next week, but home must be calling now, and I expect at least some of the Stratford gang to move on northwards as soon as they can. As ever, I'll be sorry when they go, but I wish them a calm sea and a southerly wind, to help them get safely back to Iceland.