Piccadily Circus.

For us Beijing duck for dinner last night.  For the PONette some left over duck breast with her breakfast kibbles this morning. Sophie starts the day with a spring in her step.

It's eye wateringly cold this morning. The wind has dropped but so has the temperature. On the horizon  the sun is just starting to gild the ruins of the old cathedral. From a distance the town with its medieval church towers and steeples looks like a Presbyterian San Gimignano. To medieval pilgrims arriving by boat the shrine of Saint Andrew must have looked like the new Jerusalem.

We scour the coastline in search of any ill birds. The fear is that avian flu will decimate the sea bird populations up and down the coast. Thankfully, there's no signs of any ill birds but there is a dead whale carcass that's been washed up in last nights storm. Sophie finds the scent of dead whale to be 'intriguing'. She is encouraged along.

Between the wee cottage and the coast there's a field. On the far side of the field a raised beach runs down to the rocks and the water. The raised beach is too steep to be ploughed so the farmers leave it to grow wild. This forgotten fifty yard strip is home to deer and larks and all sorts of creatures that forage on the waters edge. This morning we stop and look at a dozen cormorants standing on the rocks drying their outstretched wings. They look comical and make me laugh.  A stag looks at us and then bounds off into the long grass. There are hundreds and hundreds of noisy Canada geese. A dozen ducks paddle, line astern, across a rock pool. Humans may think it's quiet but with all this activity it's an avian Piccadilly Circus. 

By the time we get home it's not only the wildlife that's looking wild.

So starts a bright but cold Friday morning in a wee village of eighty souls ( and ten thousand birds ) on the North Sea coast.