Well, I reckon the birding at Druridge won't get any more exciting now until late March when the first migrants turn up.
Our plans to do atlas squares today were thwarted by early rain, so the weekends only birding was a quick visit to Druridge this afternoon. It didn't really get light today, a cold, damp, January day. We checked out the Budge fields and big pool, the highlights were a male sparrowhawk hunting over the fields and a drake red-breasted merganser and great-crested grebe on the pool.
We then went over the fields to Chibburn Preceptory and back by High Chibburn Farm (a woodcock was there) and the hamlet where the family party of whooper swans are still in the field. On the sea, there were 250 wigeon and sizeable common scoter flock. 35 species in total including seven new ones for the year.
I am still putting niger out for the twite, it is still getting eaten by something, but I've still not seen any twite there :-((
No photo's today - it wasn't light enough!
64 sparrowhawk
65 red-breasted merganser
66 great-crested grebe
67 shelduck
68 feral pigeon
69 blue tit
70 greylag goose
Iain, sorry about this mate but there was a cracking drake Pintail and a Black-tailed Godwit from the Budge mid-morning.
ReplyDeleteGrrrrr!! Remind me to give you my moby number. I'm not too worried about the blackwit, though it would've been nice to see, I will see plenty of them in a few months. Pintail, however, is a increasingly tricky bird which I misse dlast year at Druridge
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