Sunday 8 January 2012

From the patch...

This morning myself and Stephen headed down to Holywell. Sunday's seem to be the busiest days, with a few local birders about. The hope of Geese was thought to be lost when the West Field produced 10 Curlew, 40+ Lapwing and a few Gulls, but no Geese.


The pond itself was the most productive I've seen it for a while, but still it isn't holding the same amount of winter wildfowl as it use to, somethings changed. 7 Teal, 1 Shelduck, 1 female Goldeneye, 3 Coot, 4 Moorhen, 1 Canada Goose accompanied by the Greylag X Canada, a drake Tufted, 3 Mallard and a pair of Gadwall. Gull numbers were also low, most likely due to the closure of the tip, although Common and Black Headed Gull gathered at the public end, and a few Herring and Great Black Backed sat on the water.


Great to see that there's still Tree Sparrows about, hopefully they'll hang round through the summer as well.


A skein of Geese was picked up dropping into the East fields, so we headed down for a look, before we even reached the gate they got up, and were flying West, Greylag and Pink-Footed could be heard. We carried on hoping for some stragglers, only one goose remained, and it was a European White-fronted, Stephen's first.


In the afternoon I took my sister up to Preswick Carr, plenty of SEO's and some distant views of the Great Grey Shrike.


It seems Big Waters has stole all of Holywell's wildfowl ;)

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