Oh, what a beautiful morning! As the sun rises, a hard frost last night has coated grass and leaves with a fringe of white frost, sparking in the bright morning sunshine. Overhead, a perfect blue dome of sky is fringed with high cloud, glowing pink in the sun.
Out in the meadows, the ground is frozen hard, with puddles, pools and water troughs covered with a thick layer of ice, making life harder for a Blackbird, poking at the turf below a sun-warmed hedgerow.
Flocks of Goldfinches gleam crimson and gold, as they swirl around a tangled mass of Old Man’s Beard, which has turned a Hawthorn near the Gully bridge into an elaborate cage. Tiny Goldcrests dart down from the branches of an overhanging Sycamore to pick insects from the scrub, with fragments of the sweet, liquid song of a Song Thrush heard from the dense tangle in the Gully.
Chiffchaffs, Blue and Great Tits, Long-tailed Tits, Robins and Wrens are also emerging to feed as the sun starts to warm the hedgerows.
A noisy ‘bazaar’ of Guillemots bobs on the water, accompanied by 5 Razorbills – though mixed with the flock, their much blacker plumage makes them easy to pick out. Fulmars veer and wheel above them, along with Herring and Great Black-backed Gulls, with a pair of Gannets sailing serenely by out at sea.
A female Kestrel hugs the contours of the Lighthouse Field as she hurtles up to the top of the field, with a gang of cackling Jackdaws circling the Mile Markers.
Around the Park, the leaves of Snowdrops and Daffodils are starting to emerge, though none in flower just yet.