Judging from the map, sea watching sites are few and far between. The most obvious place is at a lighthouse, but even this proves to be a few hundred metres from the coast; the build‑up of sand spits and dunes in front of it are now also threatening to cut off a small bay from the sea. We watched the bay while having lunch at a forest picnic site; there is a second winter Mediterranean gull, a few black-headed gulls and a half-dozen eider. In the trees around us there are goldfinches, chaffinches, great, blue, coal and crested tits, blackbirds, greenfinches, robins and crows.
Eventually we found a place for sea-watching at Palmyre, though the sand is whipped painfully into our faces by the force seven northwesterlies. There is a stream of gulls passing northwards ‑ little, black‑headed, herring, great and lesser black‑back gulls. Of these last, adults outnumbered immatures four to one, but all winter plumages are represented to be studied alongside a few immature herring gulls. The gulls, and a great northern diver, battle against the wind. As they draw level with us they head out to sea towards a sandspit rather than go all the way around the edge of the bay. There are also two black‑necked and one great‑crested grebe, ten common scoter, and about thirty cormorants; wind-surfers were the only mammal to be seen.
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