Leaving for work at this time of year is always in complete darkness for me which does have its for and against, on the plus side I do get to hear the odd Tawny owl calling, usually the female calls a ‘Toowit’ sound followed by a male calling a ‘Toowhoo’, hence the old saying ‘to woo someone’, so I was once told. I  also nearly walked into Muntjac deer as it wandered along the deserted footpath in the town, also hedgehogs not yet in hibernation trotting along the side of the footpath looking for slugs in the wet grass.

Another plus on clear cold mornings it is the stars and if you are lucky the odd satellite moving from horizon to horizon, I did get a bonus on Thursday morning when the international space station went from West to East in front of me at 5:50am I could see it for a nearly 4 minutes, NASA provide a handy website ‘Spot the Station’ so you know if and when you can see it from where you live.

On the down side I can not see the usual wildlife from the train as I travel to Cambridge as it is too dark, usually I can count, fox, deer, Marsh Harrier, Buzzard and in Summer the odd Hobby.

But for now I have to make do with reading a book until the mornings get lighter.

This Weekend is the Festival of Swans at WWT Welney, So I will be helping there tomorrow,  9 common cranes were sighted there yesterday, so hopefully they will still be about, in the Winter there have been up to 13 cranes flying together, known as the ‘Fenland Flock’ this would be sight to see, I have been lucky enough to see 6 fly in together and managed to get a photograph even with them being quite a way off I think you can see they are cranes.