December 19th

A nice chilly morning!! with some lovely colours in the sky at first which soon faded. As with most patch watchers, although always optimistic, I'm not really expecting to add anything else to the year list but will be checking out where everything is for the start of 2012.

This morning I headed to the lake to see if the Water Rail was anywhere to be seen, it didn't appear and the lake was 90% frozen, just half dozen MALLARD sat on it, quacking away to each other, probably talking about the weather!! A MOORHEN was in the field above the lake and 2 GREEN WOODPECKER flew towards the garden. In the garden itself I counted 15 BLACKBIRDS feeding under, or in, various apple trees, among these were one or two FIELDFARE and a MISTLE THRUSH. BLACK HEADED GULLS are still being attracted the most recently sown field, which is now flushed with green shoots, around 10 birds were there, with more coming in from the south west as I continued my walk.

There was a nice flock of LONG TAILED TITS by the offices, with two or three BLUE TITS and a TREECREEPER, REDPOLL and SISKIN also called as they flew over. A BULLFINCH posed ever so briefly in the bright sunlight as I was heading back to the car but again eluded the camera. Another small flock of birds consisted of several GREAT TITS, CHAFFINCH and several BLUE TITS and 5 REDPOLLS stopped off in the top of a Silver Birch, one of them looking a bit frosty with a big white wing bar, I didn't see the rump, so I'm not claiming Common Redpoll yet but hopefully it might just be a matter of time :-)