The quickest way to have got thoroughly drenched through all the layers of my clothes today would have been to have got dressed this morning and then stood under the shower. But I achieved the same uncomfortable effect by walking around the reserve today as southerly gusts lashed rain, and then some more rain, and just to make sure no bit of me had been missed, some more rain on me - welcome to October! Michael Copleston and I were showing someone around the site, Michael explaining about the development of the reserve. Birds on the reserve were - 2 pintails, 4 shovelers and 53 teals, a green sandpiper and a snipe, a little egret, a little grebe, a kestrel and a few meadow pipits, skylarks and reed buntings. A helicopter flew over and spooked the ducks and I was hopeful a bittern might fly up, as I've seen them do when aircraft fly over Suffolk reedbeds, but, alas, it was not to be - I still haven't seen a bittern on the reserve. There was, however, a silver lining on this cloudy day - as I was driving out of the quarry an osprey flew low over the road towards the reserve being mobbed by 3 carrion crows.