Weather

For the past week or so, perhaps a bit longer, the weather has been a mixture of wet, cold and windy and sometimes all three at once – with some breaks of cold sunny weather. One of the good things (and bad things...) of needing to walk the dog and opting to cycle to work is that I go out in weather I would no doubt avoid if I were not doing these activities. What I see and hear on rainy days seems to be a bit different from what is around on sunny days. So, in the last week whilst cycling to work I have seen a number of herons, some quite close that have opted not to fly off; the usual multitude of magpies (are they the world's most successful bird?), pigeons, crows, rooks and black headed gulls, etc (forgetting for the moment about the ducks on the lake), but, have not seen or heard the usual green woodpeckers.
There has been little to see on my walks down to the river. Woke up today to very heavy rain as predicted, but it did ease off and so I set off with my canine friend on a very muddy and claggy walk. As with the cycle rides, little to see, so more dependent on what can be heard. I have tried on various occasions to learn more bird songs, but using a CD, out of context, does not quite cut it (and gets very boring). However, I was aware of a lot of great tit song; coot cries and flocks of rooks were taking advantage of the very wet field to feed on. No herons; no egrets – not even any ducks.....
It occurred to me that if I were walking near the coast after bad weather I might see birds that had come or had been blown inland because of the weather. My first sighting of a chough was in a street (near the harbour wall) of my home town, Caernarfon, walking around on an outside window sill – and indeed was fairly tame. Here is a photo (not mine) that I found when I was musing that in Welsh they are called red legged crows