Uneventful....

....or eventful dependant on your viewpoint.

I drove down to Pilling this morning thinking....if six 'geese' species/races are going to be in the same field again as they were yesterday then PW may as well be in on the action, but they weren't and I left Fluke Hall prematurely not least because there was too many cars/dogs and bird-chasers around for my liking, not a goose in sight, and....this is not 'My Kind of Birding'. I called in at Pilling Marsh, returned via Cockerham Moss and arrived at Cockersands an hour and a half after leaving home without a bird entering my notes.

I pulled up outside Crook Cottage and counted 155 Black-tailed Godwit and at least 420 Dunlin noting them in the book before someone arrived on the scene to tell me he'd seen the Snow Bunting on the shingle below Cockersands Abbey swiftly producing a pic of the bird on his camera display....'may as well go and see this scarcity' and thanks very much for the info.

I spent the next 2.5 hours between the Abbey and the Caravan Park - including venturing out on to Plover Scar - to no avail. I'm going to cut this story short now as it's beginning to hurt and gives me a rough idea - though I don't know the reality of it - of what it's like to drive at 120 mph all the way to Devon from Inverness to find the 'mega' has done a bunk! And here's something else which did my head in....a guy had ventured way out onto the beach at Cockersands with 15 dogs of mixed breed - yes 15 - and put to flight a few thousand wildfowl/waders. I reckon 'pillock' is about as polite a description that I can come up with to avoid calling him what I really thought he was. I called in at Glasson Dock to find the estuary almost deserted again save 15 Black-tailed Godwit feeding quite close.

So thats it....next year I'm going to buy a season ticket to support a football team fighting to gain some recognition in the game and help pay the expenses for Manchester United. This birding lark - excuse the pun - is a waste of time and it's taken me all this time to find out.

Short-eared Owl. David Cookson

This SEO has already made an appearance on Birds2blog but it's the very bird I found on 21 January in the Out Rawcliffe area and which DC photographed on the same day unknown to me....Thanks for this David, excellent is the word.