January always feels like the dullest month of the year. After the excesses and visitors over Christmas there has to be a lull. Fortunately here in the south-west we haven’t seen any of the really cold weather that has plagued the rest of the country and have had temperatures around 10°C most of the time.

It has been quiet; most of my photos are from the garden – the clouds, the sunsets, the birds. We have a particularly aggressive pied wagtail who chases all the other birds away from the food on the ground and the water. All except the starlings.

The setting sun to the south-west often creates the most dramatic colours.

Clouds

And in the garden there is still plenty of colour.

Sparrow

Winter honeysuckle

Starlings

Primula

Kale still thriving

Blue-tit

Sage

Hellebore

Thousands of starlings have arrived and their flight over the fields is mesmerising. Spring is coming. Bulbs are poking their heads above ground and daffodils are already blooming in the hedgerows and the fields where they are grown commercially and leaf buds are forming on the trees and rose bushes.

Starlings

Trencrom hill is now being grazed by Galloway cows – my granddaughters got a bit of a shock when they met them on the hill over Christmas, believing they were the ‘naughty boys‘ from the farm next door. In fact these cattle are very docile and probably got more of a scare from the screaming children!

The views are still the same. Late afternoon shadows. Distant cloud banks to the north and south indicate that it is not sunny in the whole of Cornwall. And as the sun disappears behind the spreading cloud cover the temperature dips.

Wheal Alice

Cloud to the north

Trencrom Hill

We took a walk on a blustery, but sunny afternoon alongside the Copperhouse Pool in Hayle to stretch the legs and see what is in flower this month (the George V memorial walk is full of tropical and sub-tropical plants) and saw hundreds of wading birds such as curlews with their long curved beaks, sanderlings, ruddy turnstones, Canada geese, Egyptian geese, redshanks and several gulls.

Curlew

Redshanks

Pochard

The Hayle estuary is particularly busy at this time of the year with thousands of migrants and other visitors. I didn’t manage to spot an oystercatcher though. And if I seriously want to take up bird photography I really do need to invest in a bigger zoom lens.

The Cardinal is continuing his photo project throughout 2017 – a blogging event, a monthly photo challenge. Read his blog for the rules (he is running two versions) and to view his interpretation and those of other participants.