The November sunshine is uncomfortably warm. The air is clear, the light bright and wind dead. The boats that line the narrow creek are a picture, most wrapped up for the winter. Redshanks and egrets forage on the mudflats; house sparrows in the pathside hips and haws along with blackbirds and reed buntings. On the far side of the creek a sparrowhawk dashes at a small flock of starlings and is briefly harried by passing rooks that caw in alarm