More like the blooming Tempest!!!! What an evening for a Dusk Walk. It started bright but breezy but quickly turned nasty... Several brave souls did turn up for a surprisingly enjoyable circuit in what can only be described as gale force winds with scudding clouds and shafts of blazing light that swiftly moved across the marsh like Godly spotlights.
There were some birds seen including two Common Sandpipers on Aveley Pools and a Green Sandpiper that got blown off of Purfleet Scrape so return migration is certainly underway and I did predict a Green Sand by the weekend! A good week for the Love Passage Waders, Golden Welly Competition.....
More amusing was the flock of 24 Ring-necked Parakeets that attempted to head south across the Thames to roost in Lewisham and kept getting turned around and blown back inland.... It took them about 15 minutes in the end, by which time those whirring wings must have been knackered.
Everyone has gone home now so time to venture outside into the even stronger wind and driving horizontal rain while the roof cones whistle and wine above my head.... wish me luck!
21-6-12