This afternoon with the family we had a trip down to Whitby to look at rocks and birds and just enjoy the ambience of what I knew would be a very quiet place. When we got there it was and we had a good little discussion about the reason why the East Cliff of Whitby is about 50 m higher than the West Cliff of Whitby and it is due to a fault running right up the middle of the River Esk. The lower part of the Cliff being the down throw of the fault we think although we're not quite sure about that yet because just because it is down doesn't mean it has fallen down anywhere it may have just stayed in place while the other side rose up. Geology it doesn't always make sense! The next interesting thing which was completely ordinary but absolutely totally amazing. A little while back when I was reading up about Buzzards I found out that sometimes small flocks of buzzards will walk across a field scrunching their claws into the earth to get worms to rise to the surface and then they can eat them. This odd little fact has been rummaging around in my brain and when I went to get some writing paper paper for the boys a few days ago as I was driving out from Staples on Teeside I saw a seagull stood on one spot but running up and down and I thought to myself that it was doing the same behaviour that the buzzards were in order to bring worms to the surface and then it would be dinnertime. We saw the same thing today walking down to Whitby Harbour but this time we watched the seagull for about five minutes and eventually it dabbed its beak into the ground and pulled out a very long worm. My hypothesis was confirmed and it was a totally magical moment because I am just as interested in the behaviour of birds as I am in just looking at them. Anyway as we trundled down on to the beginning of the West Pier of Whitby Harbour I saw what I knew I would probably see even I don't know why which was a very large Duck looking animal which I knew immediately was an Eider Duck. We whipped the bird book out to confirm it. Total magic. I never believed that I would see one of these without travelling up to the north-east of Scotland where there are lots of them because that is the first landfall for them when they come down from Iceland as well as from Tundra Arctic regions as well. When we went down to the end of the West Pier we thought we saw Scoters but they were too far out at sea to completely confirm this but apparently these birds and Eider Ducks are often found together. We also had a good look at the sandstone blocks at the lighthouse at the end of the pier which showed some excellent examples of cross bedding which is when the sand is deposited by the river at an angle to the river flow and obviously the steeper the angle the faster the river and this indicates river delta conditions which is what happened over the North Yorkshire Moors at that time around 180 million years ago during the Jurassic. May need to check that date up. I do all this stuff from memory by the way. We then stormed over to the east Pier and joy of joys I met my good friend and ex-girlfriend from the 1980s Tony Bunnel the folk musician, hurdy-gurdy player, and ferretologist, because she has a PhD in polecat ferrets and that was really good not least because I had not seen her for about 15 years. We will be going down to York to see her within the next week or so. I also met her husband who is called Paul and he is a very nice man. So that was great. Going out onto the East Pier we saw absolutely nothing but a gorgeous sunset spraying clouds and meaning across the West Side of Whitby. Beautiful! We got some take-away fish and chips and munched them in the car which was really nice. It was then home, Star Trek, ice cream and to this point in my simple little life when I am about to go to bed. Why go to bed early after 23 years of marriage? Because I'm tired of course! But not that tired!