Woke up really late this morning after having a nightmare where my life was completely screwed up by having a baby (not me: my wife). I couldn’t get this spectre out of my head, so I went out for a walk and some birdwatching despite a howling gale. In fact, the wind had been so bad that the TV aerial blew down overnight, to be left dangling from the telephone cables. Strangely enough the reception has been improved by this, so it can stay there until someone else decides to do something about it.

Anyway, at around midday I got into the car and headed for Swinemoor Common, another one of Beverley’s old commons (See below for map). Swinemoor gets a few dog walkers on it, but it isn’t heavily used and it consists of unimproved grassland and scrub. The piece of the common between the large drain and the Hull river gets really wet in the winter and can be good for waders in the spring. I was hoping that there were a few winter waders around.

The common is really wet at the moment and if this continues, birdwatching here in the spring could be really good. However, not much at all today; lots of Lapwings, which were very flighty, and around 200 Black-headed Gulls with a few Common Gulls. Scanning around revealed almost nothing, so I decided not to extend the walk beyond playing around with my digital camera. Took a few shots of the common, you can see how wet it is from this one.

Some bloke with his dog began shouting at me for some reason. I didn’t bother to respond, he didn’t seem to have polite intentions and I can’t be bothered to speak to rude idiots, so I left. The guy tried to intercept me by cutting across the common and seemed to get stuck in the mud.

Other species I saw were:

Blackbird, Rook, Woodpigeon, Starling, Collared Dove, Mallard, Moorhen, Kestrel and Cormorant; as uninspiring a list as you’ll ever see!