Pigeons on the saltmarsh

Is there no end to the adaptability of wood pigeons?

Birds in Cleethorpes and Humberston have steadily extended their feeding range to include salt marsh and even the mudflats where they join the company of waders and gulls.

What beats me is how their numbers stay strong despite persecution and the vulnerability of their nests to the predation of corvids.

Carrion crows and magpies are increasingly abundant and, between them, now seem to patrol ever square metre in town and country and on the coast.

I once saw a magpie emerge out of nowhere to swoop on a small rat as it scuttled across the Cleethorpes-Humberston coastal footpath.

It flew off with rodent in its bill.