Bank holiday or Sunday afternoon is never a pleasant experience at the Flash with far too many people about for my liking. At times I feel like I'm an actor in a freak show, the strange guy in the funny hat who mysteriously frequents the hides and peers through a telescope. Little children stare at me in wonder, youths snigger in their childish way and older folk seem to think I'm the guide in the hide, harassing me with question after question about what I've seen before inevitably the conversation turns to asking me to identify a bird they've seen in their garden based on an impossible description.
Sometimes it has to be done though, particularly at spring migration time, so 3pm found me at Horrock's hide looking down the spit. Despite everything it was a pretty decent visit, with arctic tern, two common sandpipers and a 2cy common gull on the spit, the tufted duck with the nasal saddle CH1 on the water, and best of all a cuckoo called from the south side and 50 swifts swirled around overhead, unseen by everybody present except the madman in the hide.
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