Starling sunset

Leighton Moss. From the causeway, starlings coming into roost. They didn't aggregate into wheeling, swirling, and pulsing clouds as sometimes happens here, and that have been so successfully photographed elsewhere by After the Rain and Desperately Seeking. They arrived rapidly in flocks of hundreds and thousands and dropped straight into the reedbeds. Still a great spectacle though, and all the better for the intensely coloured sky after the sun set.

This wasn't my intended blip today. I only popped to the Moss because I had a little time coming back from Kendal. In the morning I did another timed count of birds for the next Winter Bird Atlas. This was another saltmarsh and mudflat square west of Flookburgh. Not so many birds this time as last weekend, but another extraordinary place to visit. The saltmarsh edge is being eroded rapidly, and has broken up into an interlocked jigsaw of turves collapsed onto the mud below. In places the eroding marsh is exposing cobbly skears. I will post some pictures on Flickr as soon as I have a moment.

ps there is now one other picture posted here

I will have to go back for a second visit in January or February, so there will be another opportunity to photograph my intended blip again.