Last Thursday, Fiona and I had a neat little outing to Saltholme RSPB Nature Reserve in Teeside. It was very quiet the weather was cold and overcast and there were not a lot of birds close to the hides but what there were, were totally amazing, huge flocks of Pochards, Widgeons, Lapwings and Canada geese. I usually associate Pochards with York University Lake but I have not seen one there for years which is possibly because they have all emigrated further north to the Teeside area! Because Fiona is still not well with her sinusitis we did not do the whole of the Reserve and the soup and roll at the RSPB Centre were excellent as usual. A nice way to restore a not well woman! After a quiet walk around we decided to go but had a look in the Teeside Birdwatching Groups new hide right next to the car park overlooking a small pond. Well, what a surprise because there were two Godwits about 15 m from the hide and I never believed I would ever see Godwits in my life they are sort of like tall elegant curlews but with long straight dark pink looking beaks which they ram in and out of the ground really fast to get their food. Even though we were both pretty cold because we could not walk around too fast and work a sweat up like we normally do we sat there for about half an hour gazing wondrously at these two fine animals of which when I first saw them I thought they were Snipe but one of the resident RSPB experts put me right on that and then told us an awful lot about Godwits and other birds on the pond. A magical end to an entrancing 90 minutes in a heavily industrialised part of Teeside with a nuclear power station 2 miles down the road but also thousands of acres of brilliant nesting, feeding and resting ground and water for some of the world's birds. Even though the industry dominates the landscape over the last around 7 miles off the Tees Estuary in fact it only accounts for about 20% of the total acreage so there is plenty of room for birds and other animals. We also see Deer down there as well!