Last Thursday with Fiona we had a nice outing to Saltholme RSPB reserve in Teeside. We walked straight down to the Saltholme Hide and there did not appear to be much going on but fortunately there were two RSPB Wardens who soon pointed out a multitude of very interesting birds. Amongst a flock of Canada Geese were Bean Geese roosting quite contentedly amongst them. An absolutely lovely bird. It was a very windy day and there were big flocks of Widgeons all tucked in underneath the windward side of the lake nicely out of the wind although several of them took forays into the middle of the lake and sometimes were swamped by the mini waves which did not seem to bother them at all. One of the wardens jumped up very excitedly, always a good sign, because he had spotted the resident Marsh Harrier hunting around a kilometre away on the other side of the reserve. This was an amazing sight because the bird has at least a 4 foot wingspan but when hunting flies about a metre off the ground and sometimes when it spotted something it seemed to dip right into the ground when going into the drainage ditches over there and out of our site for a few seconds. Every few minutes it would shoot up into the air about 10 m and really scaring lots of the Lapwings and Seagulls into the air in huge flocks but they are too big for the Marsh Harrier to go for. We watch this bird for about 10 min which was quite amazing because it is known to be resident on the Reserve but once it has hunted it just spends all of its time amongst the reeds out of sight a pattern of behaviour common to all raptors. We had a nice chat with a woman Warden who used to be a lecturer at Sunderland University and gave us a useful insight into the pressures that older workers are put under because they are a lot more expensive than younger ones. She said that she had been put under various types of pressure for several years to leave as have others because she was too expensive compared to younger lecturers. There is something very bad going on in our economy at the moment and this is nothing really to do with the government it is just unprofessional and bad practice by public sector managers who no doubt will claim it comes from the spending cuts atmosphere but they do not have to do it. On the other hand and this was something that she accepted, believe it or not, it is good that younger people will be getting jobs in the University. There seems to be a clear contradiction at the moment between the government's desire for people to work longer but the public sector's desire to get rid of workers who are too old and expensive. Neither Labour or Tory governments have or will do anything about this just out of interest and it will be interesting to see how this develops over the years and will have a relevance to me with my attempts to go into the teaching profession as a 55-year-old but paradoxically because of my virtually non-existent work record over the last 19 years I will be deemed a cheaper worker! A cracking day out and Fiona was not too dizzy with her sinusitis. Oh, I must mention this, yet again we saw Black Tailed Godwits but this time feeding in a very shallow pond which was quite amazing because they quickly scoot along with their heads underwater snuffling up the food. A nice lunch time out for us as well!