For a brief moment, the sun shone!

Yesterday I had a day down in Sussex with my daughter. The calendar had clocked up another year in my life and to celebrate we had a day out. Plan A was - drive so far and then walk along the seafront into Brighton. Plan B was - drive into Brighton and take it from there. Plan B was put into action! The wind blew - icily; the clouds gathered - darkly and the rain rained - very heavily and wetly!! But nonetheless we had a good day and great lunch out - with thanks to my daughter :D !

Today I awoke to sunshine. I couldn't get out as early as anticipated to enjoy the sun for reasons totally beyond my control - grrrrr.

However, I headed off eventually to Painshill in search of nesting Grebes and Nuthatches!

The former I found; they have built a nest in the middle of the water and she was sitting there. I don't how many eggs there are if there are any at all - at this point in time!

As the wind blew she was obviously having a "bad hair" day.

He went off for a swim then had a preen followed by a bit of wing stretching.

She then settled again as he came back. She'd prostrated herself several times, but he was ignoring her!

She had a swim and then got back on the nest in a different position

and he went hunting for food! Which he consumed!

Back at the "ranch" she carried on sitting.

I'd been standing watching the Grebes for over an hour and by now the sun had gone completely and the storm clouds gathered. The wind was nastily cold and I was frozen. So with the thoughts of the cafe in mind, I headed off. It was clear that there wasn't going to be any interesting action from the pair for the time being.

It was in the same area that Phil and I had seen the nesting Nuthatches the other day but today - no sign of them at all sadly.

However, as I walked through the woods towards the cafe I heard this high pitched calling and yes - something landed on the trunk of the tree!!

A Treecreeper with nesting material in its beak! It flew backwards and forwards to the tree behind me where it was gathering the same type of twigs each time. It was quite clever in assessing how it was going to get a fairly large twig through a very narrow slit in the tree trunk!

But it did this several times with success!

After a while, it stopped and just posed on the trunk - lovely!

Eventually it popped back into the nesting hole and, as my fingers were hardly functioning with the cold by now, I headed off for a cuppa and then on to do the food shopping!