I was awakened at first light today by a double bang coming from the lounge, the sound of a metal breaking free of its wall mounting and dropping a coupe of inches to the floor. Neither floor nor the radiator were damaged fortunately, but both the wall mountains had broken. Given they were made from some kind of hard plastic, this would have happened sooner or later, as the actual mounting points on each wall bracket weren't very large, so the pressure exerted on them by a thirty kilo load of iron plus temperature variations would be bound to take their toll eventually. A strange start to the day.
Walking to and from the shops along the beach, I've decided is congenial if I'm not in a hurry, albeit a little slower across sand and uneven patches of terrain. If there's little wind car exhaust fumes tend to accumulate along the Paseo de la Playa, some days worse than others. I should have thought of this ages ago. In the same place as yesterday, I spotted a pair of Sandpipers today, defending their patch of sandy soil and grass from other birds. Not that there were many of them. I was pleased to get this photo.
Perhaps because this week I've had less to preoccupy myself with, I seem to have noticed several different kinds of birds for the first time. Occasionally there's the beginnings of a murmuration of starlings around sunset. By day few are visible, but their huge numbers are audible, to judge by their birdsong from the trees everywhere I walk in town.
I have to make the most of this free time. When I return to Cardiff, there won't be so much daylight. Inevitably there'll be cloud to darken things further, and only the usual local urban species to see - Crows, Gulls, Magpies, Sparrows, occasionally Robins, Blackbirds and even masses of Starlings, with Cormorants and Mallards, the occasional Heron and rare Jay along the river Taff. Being here beside the sea is rewarding in a different way, not least because its unfamiliar, I guess.
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