Sunday afternoon

Only one brief visit to the patch this weekend. To be honest, I was lacking motivation, which I often do after a foreign trip. This lack of enthusiasm for the patch is even worse if I have been somewhere hot and the weather back home is horrible, which it was this weekend.

I eventually summoned up the energy to head out at Sunday lunchtime, not before stopping for a bacon butty at the Drift Cafe though.

I bumped into Steve Holliday (a real Druridge scarcity) at the Budge screen, he was scanning the fields for the green-winged teal, but we couldn't see it. A water rail had been in the open, but it disappeared into cover.

A coal tit was on the feeders and as I wandered through the bushes I flushed a woodcock and then came across a group of long-tailed tits. All good January birds for the patch, normally not picked up until the autumn.

I braved the gale and had a look on the sea. A gannet flew north, another good January bird. Other than few red-breasted mergansers and a couple of guillies and razorbills there was little to see. I headed home for a cuppa and some warmth.

56 water rail
57 great tit
58 coal tit
59 woodcock
60 long-tailed tit
61 gannet
62 guilliemot

PWC score 69