Twice Round

I was hoping that the rain front that came in from the west over night would drop a few migrants on my coastal patches, and it did, but it was only a few. As Ian said this morning as we both took shelter from a particularly heavy shower "it was raining just a little too hard". The wind didn't help much either as it was veering from SSE to SSW, and I think if there had been more easterly in it it would have been a better morning. There we go that's all the excuses as to why it was crap over with.

I worked three coastal patches; Mount Park, Fleetwood Cemetery and Rossall School twice. The reason for that was after I had worked all three once, the conditions improved so I went round them all again. I won't bore with you what I saw on each round and have just lumped the meagre totals together.

 The Mount

In the Mount it was raining heavily and all I could muster was a couple of Goldcrests and a single Chiffchaff. There were the usual 'ticking' autumn Robins and these too were probably migrants.

On to the cmetery and I did fair better here. The southern end was better as it was more sheltered and flicking around in the willows were 5 Goldcrests, 2 Chiffchaffs and possibly up to 3 Willow Warblers. A 1st winter male Sparrowhawk shot through and a few Swallows battled south against the wind that had now picked up to around 15 mph.

 Chiffchaff

Conditions at Rossall School were tricky to say the least and finding any migrants was virtually impossible. A few local Swallows were feeding over the fields and I had 2 heading south out at sea over the waves. The visibility ast sea was poor and consequently a quick look only resulted in 3 Common Scoters and an Eider.

On the way back to my car I did manage one migrant in the form of a Wheatear. I then headed to Fleetwwod Marsh Nature Park to see if the wet weather had dropped any waders in and it hadn't. On the pools were 22 Tufted Ducks, 2 Pochards, 30 Coots and a Little Grebe.

The local authority are in the process of re-surfacing the car park and footpaths which is a total waste of money. They don't spend a penny on managing the habitat at the site and yet they can find several thousand pounds to re-surface the car park for the benefit of the dog walkers who just spend all their time disturbing all the wildlife!

It is totally amazing that money can be found to do this when the coalition government is proposing some huge cuts in funding for nature conservation. Targets for restoring farmland birds have gone and huge cuts are proposed in agri-evironment funding to name but a few. It would seem that our current government has no concern for biodiversity in the UK at all. At least I can sleep easy knowing that I didn't vote for this shower of shite!