Christine's walking & birds blog

Having been grounded for a week with a cold/flu, I ventured out for an early-evening walk. Two wheatears were on Monument Hill. Some reeds have been cut right back, but from those still standing a Cetti's warbler sang explosively.

Great dark clouds were massing in the sky to the south and there were several rumbles of thunder. In past years I'd wait to see if anything would be brought down ahead of the storm; a bunch of dunlins once memorably landed on a nearby island with the first raindrops.

But I must be getting old and feeble because I didn't want to be out in what was approaching. As it grew darker and darker I hurried back along the footpath, pausing for a while to watch a water rail foraging in the bittern's channel.

A flash of lightning followed immediately by a crash of thunder sent me scurrying to my car - which I reached as the heavens opened. It was quite exciting driving along Lake End Road, with puddles forming rapidly at the road-sides and the rain spearing down so hard you thought the windscreen must surely break.