Venus visible first thing over the May, then a beautiful sunrise, sun all day and only a breeze from the south-west, and finally a sunset. I’ve mentioned this many times but these are proper Crail days, not the endless succession of gales and rain. It’s been colder temperature wise this weekend than the last three weeks, with a frost in places last night, but it hasn’t felt so. It’s the wind and the damp that really get to you.
A roe deer close to Wormiston
Crail has remained fairly quiet this week. I long for the spring and when I can write about something other than the weather. I cycled off around the coast path to Fife Ness and back by Wormiston this morning in hope of early excitement. But late winter business as usual. There was a nice flock of 9 male long-tailed ducks all in breeding plumage showing off their long tails to each other. Wormiston still remains the place to see lots of roe deer – often the only thing you can see in the bare fields apart from the rooks. They are getting more focussed around the rookery and some will be breeding in only a few weeks. Other signs of spring are the heads of the black-headed gulls: some are just turning brown now. I know it’s confusing but black-headed gulls have brown hoods, little gulls and Mediterranean gulls have proper black hoods, and there is even a brown-headed gull in China (although this has the same colour hood as our black-heads …). I blame the museum taxonomists who named these species. Clearly it was Friday afternoon or Monday morning when these species crossed their desk.
A black-headed gull getting its brown hood for the spring
Wild Crail 
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