With heavy rain forecast for today, it was a bit of a surprise when we ended up with a dump of the white stuff this morning, where momentarily there were various Christmas card scenes, mostly in the north of the harbour. However within a few hours the grey sludge had replaced the pristine snow and most had melted away by this evening. The cold snap did see a few Lapwing and Redwing pass over this afternoon, but you could hardly call it a substantial cold weather movement, and with temperatures due to rise back up to 15 degrees over the weekend, is this winter now already done and dusted? The cold weather did seem to deliver the first 2 Goldeneye of the winter, with 2 female types off Jerry’s Point along with 20 Red-breasted Merganser and 14 Great Crested Grebe, and off Knoll beach there was just a single Black-necked Grebe, 1 Slavonian Grebe, 3 Great Crested Grebe and 8 Red-breasted Merganser. There was a surprise Ring Ouzel at Challow Hill, 4 Marsh Harrier were in Middlebere and a Spoonbill was in Holes Bay NW.