On Thursday the Birding group took a walk in Branscombe, walking the easy route from the village to the coast to The Sea Shanty (café by the sea) hoping we would see a variety of birds on the way.

Without a pond, lake, estuary or marsh it rules out a large group of birds: the waders. But without the tides being in our favour a different site was needed hence the walk in hope of seeing woodland birds and birds of the fields. We saw a plethora of magpies, many pigeons - some wood, others feral - but not much else apart from a rather nice looking male kestrel enjoying a thermal.

We saw the usual rooks and jackdaws, robins and dunnocks but we had to make do with it being a nice, sociable walk on a sunny autumnal day.

Some of our group stayed on from our coffee stop and carried on to have lunch at the Sea Shanty. I have yet to see the star rating of that lunch.

Janet Fernley