This post deals with the second half of my bird survey for the square shown below and is shown on the Google Earth map from number 6 to 11. (Click on this map to see more clearly). At the crossroads (where the I met the pony and traps from my first post) I carried on across going south and walked round to the right (west ish) to follow the road towards Godney.
Just as I turned that corner there was a lovely old apple orchard on my left where there were several Fieldfares, Redwings and other Thrushes feeding on the windfall apples.
Carrying on westwards to the small hamlet of Godney, this church caught my eye. I bet it looked very interesting from the inside, but I didn't have time to pop in to take a look.
At the church, I followed the road round a sharp left hand bend and walked south towards the rhyne (at the bottom of the first map). There were some lovely pollarded Willows along this stretch of road and as you can see from the following photos below, I couldn't resist taking some shots of these! 
These next two were taken along the same stretch of road, but just into the sun which gives a totally different feel to the shots. 
This photo below was taken looking west along the large rhyne at the bottom of the first map (number 8 on the Google map). If you click to enlarge this photo, you will see that there are four Grey Herons standing on the banks here.
The fields on this section of the walk were slightly lower lying than the rest of my survey area and therefore had flooded in the recent rains which made for picturesque scenery.
If there had been much more rain, the roads would have been flooded too and I wouldn't have been able to do the survey on this particular day.
At this point, I followed the footpath shown in the first map running east along the left hand side of the rhyne.
Walking along this path, as I looked right, there was a lovely view of Glastonbury Tor which dominates the surrounding flat Somerset Levels landscape.
Here's another view of the Tor, but with some lovely wind sculpted trees in the foreground.
As I walked along the path, I became aware that ahead of me was a field of cows. Now those of you familiar with my blog know that cows and me don't mix too well, specially on bird survey walks! However, I had no choice but to carry on past these beasties. If you click on this photo, you will see in the distance, on the right hand side, one black and white cow ahead, quite close to the edge of the field and the rhyne.
As I approached, this massive madam didn't seem to want to budge out of my way. I could see a confrontation coming......... so, after gritting my teeth, I forged ahead, pretending that I didn't care whether this bovine bulk was blocking my path to freedom. I know Roy will think I'm a right woose (-:, but I think cows can be quite unpredictable. Anyway..............
......in the end the puny human bird surveyer prevailed and Doris gave way and was able to get back to her grass munching.
My troubles weren't over yet though.......if you check back at the first map, you will see that where the rhyne does a sharp bend to the right, there is a track showing which runs north back towards the village and the end of my survey. Well, the stark fact was, that it wasn't there! No track or at least if it was there, it was under a few feet of water! I was stuck! I didn't want to back track all the way round again, it was a long way, and I was quite weary by this time. The surrounding fields all looked like the one shown below, pretty flooded, but I decided that I had to try and walk along the edge of these fields to get back to the village (from number 10 to 11 on the Googe map). I had waterproof boots on, but they were only ankle high. Well, it wasn't too bad for most of the time, if a bit squishy, but when I got to towards the gate in the field near to the village, the water was alot deeper. I looked around to see if there was any other way to get out of that field, but there wasn't, so I had to grit my teeth again and just walk quickly through that water to the gate. It was up to my knees! 
The walk back to my car (on the left of this photo) was very wet and squelchy and cold, nevertheless, I really did enjoy this survey and look forward to the second winter walk. Maybe for the spring/summer ones, it will be a wee bit drier! (-:
We started our route at the beach car park in the village. We soon picked up Robin, House Sparrow, Pied Wagtail, Song Thrush, Winter Wren and Stonechat in this area.
This is the view westward from the car park along the beach.
The beach consists of small pebbles which is very tiring to walk along so........
......we decided to walk just off the beach along the side of the reedbed which was much easier going. We still wanted to record any birds on the beach and at sea, so occasionally we'd walk up the sloping beach to take note of any birds we'd have missed otherwise.
The reedbed proved quite productive even in winter with both Water Rail and Cetti's Warbler being heard. In spring this will hopefully be alive with many more birds!
The reedbed had some open fresh water where we had a nice selection of ducks and gulls.
In the distance in the photo below you can see the caravan park which we would be aiming for later in the survey.
There were quite a few birds feeding in this weedy area...... Dunnocks, Goldfinches, Reed Buntings and Meadow Pipits. I'd have loved to find a Snow Bunting amongst them, but alas, not on this occasion. (-:
One of our searches out to sea. On this day, we were quite disappointed to find that there was nothing to record out at sea. We did have a nice selection of gulls roosting on the beach though.........Black-headed, Common, Herring, Lesser black-backed and Great black-backed.
At the end of the fresh water lake our route took us inland along coastal footpaths. This is where the map wasn't very helpful. We had been hoping to take the marked footpath just before that inland lake (see first map), but that was totally under water and impassable. So we carried on hoping to take the red dotted footpath that was showing just outside of our survey square. We would stop counting birds until we'd walked back into our square. We were therefore surprised to find this coastal path sign directly after the end of the fresh water lake. As this was still in our square, but not showing on the map, we decided to take it and see where it would lead us. 
I'm glad I wasn't on my own as the footpath wasn't always obvious. Landowners on the whole though are fairly casual about trespass so long as you respect the countryside you're walking through and shut any gates etc.
These fields and the scrubby hedgerows surrounding them were surprisingly quiet birdwise. I did manage to snap a shot of an obliging Robin. I'm sure that come springtime, there will be alot more activity.
This is a view looking back down the hill towards the sea. If you look closely, you can see the slightly darker area of grass in the middle of this field which indicates a used footpath, so I guess we were where we should be....more or less! (-:
Having walked through the caravan park not shown on the map, but just below Swyre, we ended up on the yellow minor road walking back towards West Bexington (see first map).
As hoped for, we added quite a few more species in the village, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Bullfinch, Greenfinch, Chaffinch, Collared Doves. Here the Herring Gulls found the house roofs to be handy perches.
Obviously a good place for a natter and other more essential functions! (-:
After just over two hours walking, it was very nice to sit in this convenient cafe for a welcome cup of coffee.
I'm really looking forward to the three other times we have to do this survey. Spring migration particularly could be very exciting here.
