I'd been planning and putting off a trip to this cliff top walk and RSPB reserve in Cumbria for a couple of years now and had determined that today was going to be the day.

I was up at 5am and set off shortly after, for the 3½ hour trip from Blackpool to the village of St Bees.

The train station is a 10 minute/½ a mile walk to the beach, from where the cliffs meet the shore and provide egress for the ascent.

The weather men and women had promised clear skies...

Just passing time before getting things ready for the off.

Looking forward to this trip as last year I had just bought a dslr camera and didn't know how to use it properly.
Now I have what I consider a better dslr and know my way about it now, I hope to get some great pictures this time.
And to capture some different birds that we would probably never see in Britain?

Anyway, found out the bosses were not going to pay us travelling time. Needless to say...

Been keeping very busy lately. New job is creating a lot of paper work.

Was in Port glasgow today and what I would have done to spend more time there. Tide out, birds all over the place but couldn't stop.

It was a beautiful day as well, bit cold in the morning but nice and warm by lunchtime.

Tried to take pictures of two birds on a roof of an old building. They were all black, Like Carrion Crows but smaller, bigger than blackbird and making a chough...

Well, the blackcaps which frequented our garden all winter have disappeared, presumably into woodland where they normally live. Meanwhile, delighted to have daily visits from a great spotted woodpecker. He loves my homemade suet blocks (I've mixed in some grubs). Also doing our bit to help the sparrow population - we've at least a couple of dozen nesting in/near us and spending quite a lot of time on our feeders.

Can anyone identify a bird for us? We were walking onto Exmoor...

A bit of a beginners ramble....

My reluctant plans to work over this weekend fell through (Yay!!), leaving a completely free weekend (apart from all those DIY jobs..... that can be ignored).
We went to Pennington Flash in glorious weather on a Saturday afternoon. So did hundreds and hundreds of other people, but only 23 birds.
A nice day out and a good lesson in how not to go about hide birding. Sitting in the bunting hide watching birds that we knew of and a few that...