A day in London

Had an interesting couple of days in London. In addition to doing Beddington Farmlands, Mitcham Common Gunsite and Watermeads in the Wandle Valley and Staines Res on the way back to Oxford I also got to see my 74 year old religious zealot mother get intoxicated after she accidentally consumed something. Ebird list from Beddington here. A few picture highlights below: 

First-winter Caspian Gull at Beddington- not such the regular speciality it once was there as the gull numbers are now much reduced 

Linnets at Beddington 

Male and female Goldeneye at Staines

The best view I got of the Lesser Scaup at Staines (enlarged below). 

It's actually a bit of a novelty coming back to London to see these everywhere.

Good work by Zach and Charlie at the farmlands opening up the viewing from the southern lake hide

The 'Wet Grassland'- this will never be wet grassland I suspect but still a nice bit of scrape. Valencia/Viridor/KKR have kicked the can down the road further by delaying the 'watering down of the ecological ambitions revisioning submission' to the end of March. All of this (the Beddington Farmlands Project) is legally obligated to be completed and opened to the public by December 31st 2023. Quite a conflict appears to be a near certainty.