My Mum was ill with one of the lurgies going around at the moment , bad lurgies, so she was not up to a visit and the lads wanted to stay in so Fo and I went off to do a couple of hours of twitching at Saltholme RSPB site in the heart of Teeside(or hell depending on how you feel about heavy industry : I like it : heaven) . We went straight over to where its likely to see Long Eared Owls about a kilometer from the entrance and saw two of them and because it was a couple of hours from sunset and darkening a little bit they were getting a bit restless which was nice . They usually don't do anything at all for hours. The warden had the huge Optricon lenses set up and they were really helpful with information as well as jokes because just behind where we all standing there was a very muddy bog and they kept on saying to newcomers to the group "to not step back or we may never see you again!". After this we strolled over to a newly opened section up a 50m hill and just as we got to the top the warden there said " You must be the luckiest man alive ", " Could be right" I thought, "because we have spent the last two hours tracking down this Bittern and here it is " . It was amazing because we were looking down onto it from about 100m away and it was in full view , apparently very rare even on the 4 square miles of RSPB site they were on . Fiona was delighted and excited especially after the Long Eared Owls! Great gal: charm her with a bird sanctuary on a cold day , see very rare and I mean very rarely seen birds and she just swoons and falls into your arms or possibly a ditch if there's one nearby! Its happened ! In spite of the cold wind my binoculars did steam up a bit but that was also because of the excitement of seeing the Bittern moving around amongst the reeds and that is even more rare than rare. We then went over to another hide and saw the Water Rails and Fo was utterly enchanted by them . They're rarely seen either although they exist in pretty much most large reed beds you will come across in the North. A very nice afternoon out and the view over to the Transporter Bridge from the Haverton Hill Hide was magnificent in a Lowry sort of way with the gaunt Cleveland Hills of the Tontine in the background . I fall just a little bit more in love with the Tees valley when I see views like that .

Yesterday was Fiona's birthday so we went over to celebrate at her Mums in South Lakeland stopping over for a walk in the Howgills . They were lovely all clean and washed by the recent snow and ice . We solved a mystery about the scree slopes thinking for quite a while they were formed by eroded rock from above but in this case we were completely wrong because they are formed by the erosion of the soil cover which in the Howgills is very thin and made up of well over 70% small stone laid down as glacial till at the end of the last ice age . We were lead astray because the scree is nearly always near rock outcrops but the give away was that looking closer at the outcrops the scree is greatest where the outcrop forms a funnel to channel water therefore faster water more erosion . Drift geology : love it . There is even an alluvial fan effect seen on every river as the water spreads out as it comes out of the channel. You see it in a sink every day!

Barely a bird to be seen yesterday although we saw three Field fares. Fo was still very drained from her recent cold/flu so we split from the lads and they went up to the Calf the highest point in the Howgills and Fo and I pottered over to Cautley Spout and had a good look around with the binoculars . Fo's Mum was in good fettle and Fo's sister was there as well as the lads cousin India. A very nice day out and a lovely celebration of Fiona's Birthday with the food (and cake : must mention the cake : its middle class to mention the cake : Fo will be mad if I don't mention the cake although she doesn't read my blog much : if I did a cake blog maybe she would : then again I could mention the cake in every walking blog because we could have a "cake break! instead of the biscuit break on the walks) Anyway ; I've mentioned the cake !