Jonathon has always wanted to see a starling murmuration so we spent a day in Somerset with Iain Green, one of our favourite wildlife photographers, in the hope that the starlings would "dance" for us at the end of the day. As you'll see from the photos, the day started with blue skies and sunshine but got steadily greyer and colder with a biting wind. At least the rain stayed off so we could take advantage of the whole day.

We started our day at Shapwick Heath, a wetland nature reserve with a lot of reed beds.

There were lots of water birds around but not too many within photograph-able distance. Thankfully we managed to take a snap of one or two.

Some of the swans were still quite young and hadn't quite got the adult plumage.

There weren't many flowers around but still some interesting flora.

There was some interesting fungus around as well.

The gorse is always in flower so added a flash of yellow here and there.

A few greylag geese made a fleeting visit before lots of squawking and flying off. There were also grebe around but perhaps it was too cold for them to dance.

The tyre seats were really comfortable.

Good job the camera's big enough!!

We went back to Shapwick Heath for a little while before moving over to Ham Wall Nature Reserve (RSPB) to wait for the starlings.

We could see Glastonbury Tor from one of the hides at Ham Wall.

The starlings started to gather and off we went to watch them. They were very kind and did some swirling patterns but didn't stay up for long because of the cold wind.

We had a lovely day with Iain and seeing the starlings in action was a special treat to end our wildlife day. We had already decided that we would be too tired to drive home so we'd booked to stay at Meare Manor where we were made to feel very welcome and had a lovely comfy room. They recommended "The Who'd a Thought It" for dinner and the yummy chicken balti we had warmed us up after a very cold day.

I've not been to this part of England before but I'm sure we'll be back before too long.