A combination of cabin fever, after too many days of snow, and a burning desire to break the mould of our typical Christmas led us to take our Christmas dinner in picnic form today, on the seafront at Tynemouth. And mighty fine it was too; glorious sunshine for a post-picnic walk along to North Shields fish quay and back. Two of the beneficiaries of our alfresco Christmas dinner were this black-headed gull............
...and this feral pigeon - both fine specimens of nature's waste disposal units.
The walk to North Shields yielded this handsome curlew...and......
... numerous oystercatchers whose beaks almost glowed in the low-angle winter sunshine and which....
....hopped with great aplomb from rock to rock, plus........
.... this crow that had found its own Christmas dinner that it had to defend against some pretty fierce-looking...
...great black-backed gulls..... while, also in black-and-white, up at the fish quay we came across this....
... grubby-looking pied wagtail, looking for scraps, and a...
... drake eider swimming .........
amongst the trawlers that were in harbour for Christmas. Then, on the way back we passed .....
... turnstones, that seemed to have added de-icing grit to their diet, and ....
... this very smartly turned-out redshank, complete with leg ring. But, best of all, there were scores of these wonderful...
... golden plovers, whose feather edges literally glowed golden in the afternoon sunlight. In about three and a half months I'll be listening to their plaintive calls as they begin to arrive back on their breeding grounds on Chapel Fell in Weardale.
A Christmas day to remember.
Merry Christmas to all........
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