It’s been too cold recently to want to go for a walk but too sunny not to feel around 2.30 p.m. that I’ve wasted the day. So I caught the bus and walked back along the estuary, grumbling to myself about the cold wind. The tide was high. Lots of widgeon, herons and egrets, curlews in a field and – on the wonderfully etched mudflats – lapwings and (I think) dunlin. The dunlin made the lapwings look enormous, and the lapwings made the curlews look gigantic. As for the herons . . .