Summary January 2012
Summary January 2012
Garden
The new year started with very mild weather with some wet days and some quite windy days. The Tits seem to be finding lots of insects already and some days you can see a mist of hovering gnats over the lawn in the back garden. Goldfinch numbers on the feeders peaking at around 18 but Greenfinches not evident. The Blackcap we had occasionally wasn’t seen for a bit but towards the end of the month it returned. The Blackbirds are back on the lawn and the Wood Pigeons and Collared Doves that have been absent for a while have started to reappear dominating the bird table when they can.
We regularly have two Dunnocks and one – sometimes two – Robins reasonably frequently. In the trees visible from our house windows there are frequently Mistle Thrushes to be seen. A small flock of Redwings put in an appearance for the first ten days of the month and they were freely mixing among the other Thrushes. We had a Mistle Thrush in our bird bath on 16th which a female Blackbird was rather put out about. As the Thrush bathed a couple of House Sparrows could not help but try to join in which made the Blackbird even more agitated. By the middle of the month it was getting pretty cold and the bird bath had to be thawed out every morning to get rid of a fairly thick layer of ice. By the end of the month it was much colder.
Walks and Days Out
We didn’t have much in the way of days out this month as by the time we had got over the New Year festivities, Anne got a cold and this lasted until the end of the month. This meant that she didn’t do much birding and most of mine was done with the birding group.
Birding Group
Our first birding group day out was on 10th January when we went to Pennington Flash. The high points here were Goosander and Snipe. On the 17th – my birthday – we went to Tatton Park where we had some good sightings including two Mandarin Ducks, some Goldcrests, Treecreeper and Nuthatch. The following week (24th) we were supposed to be going to Redesmere but it was decided that the weather forecast was too bleak to make that desirable so it was changed to Pennington Flash again which was pretty much as it had been a fortnight before. On the last day of the month we went up to Martin Mere WWT. It was a cold but dry day and we got fantastic views of Marsh Harriers and Peregrines but also saw Buzzard and Kestrel, so a good raptor day. Other highlights were very close view of Ruff particularly a view of a 1st winter Ruff next to a non-breeding male Ruff which highlighted clearly the problems with identifying Ruffs. The obvious difference in colour of the legs and the bills was very illustrative of the incredibly varied appearance of Ruffs in winter. We should have been going to Mere Sands Woods after Martin Mere but there was so much to see there that we all decided just to stay at the reserve and take in all the hides.