Just like buses......

You wait for two months for a year-tick and just like buses, three come along at once!

In my last post I was moaning that I couldn't see me getting another year-tick before NYE, but a good walk (slide mainly) around the patch yesterday yielded three!

It was cold yesterday, but a really nice, crisp, winters day. A good day to be out to blow some cobwebs away before hitting the drink again. The first year-tick was pochard, at least three of them on the big pool, pochard are very rare at Druridge nowadays and I didn't see any of the spring birds so these three were nice to see.

After checking the pool we walked along the dunes before skating along the haul road to the preceptory, there was a covey of 11 grey partridge along and a handful of snipe feeding along the sunny side of the ditch, I was hoping for stock dove on the piles of chicken-muck, but there were none.


Chibburn Preceptory with the snowy Simonside Hills in the background

We walked down to Low Chibburn Farm where the next year-tick was found (as had been predicted by me earlier) - yellowhammer, another bird I normally see in the spring around the farm. There were three of them in the hawthorns.


Yellowhammers

At Druridge Hamlet, one of the cottages has a new array of shiny feeders, maybe they where delivered by Santa? They attracted a lot of birds including tree sparrows (year-tick number three), I thought the Druridge tree sparrows had moved on, hopefully this lot will stay around and find our nest boxes.

Robin

Hopefully I'll get one more visit in before 12 bells!

153 pochard

154 yellowhammer

155 tree sparrow