With Rose Ava Bradley finally making her arrival into the world on November 20th, time further away from home has been been hard to come by but infact, her coming has made me appreciate what is on my doorstep even more. The original due date was the 5th, and a few folk were justifiably surprised to see me at the Minsmere Cliff Swallow twitch that day. This American vagrant had made landfall near the visitor centre with 3 Barn Swallow, and I managed to convince Debs that should anything happen, I would be back in 2 hours. I was, but need not have worried. Having lost a week in hospital with initially poorly mum and baby, work kindly offered me another week's paternity leave which I gladly snapped up. This eased the pressure, and I have been able to grab the odd hour here and there on the patch, sometimes with baby. On the 4th of December, I elected to leave Rose with mum and headed down to The Covey at Wheatfen to watch an obliging Cattle Egret devouring worms around the feet of...