Down here on the Fylde we had some snow this morning. There is nothing significant about that, but it is useful as a demarcation as far as the blog is concerned in terms of the period covered by this post. As is usual for this part of Lancashire, the snow had virtually disappeared nearly as soon as it had settled! We are back to the windy, wet stuff now.
Just about a week ago today, Gail and I were on the south side of the Ribble carrying out the first January visit at our wintering bird survey site. We had clear skies, with a light to moderate east-northeasterly wind, a ground frost, and it was quiet. With high pressure settled over the UK for a few days now, it has been pleasant to be out under the cold, wintery sun, but birds have been thin on the ground.
At this time of year, the post-dawn movement of birds leaving their overnight roosts is very much kept to a minimum. We didn't have any Whooper Swans flying over this morning, but we did have a group of 46 feeding in a field to the north of our survey site. Along the edge of the dyke that forms the northern boundary of our site, we had a pair of Stonechats, and they were new in for the winter.
We follow our VP watch, by walking a transect, and on our return leg we came across a Starling singing his heart out from on top of a telegraph pole, and he was throwing a few other species into his repertoire. His song included elements of Blackbird, House Sparrow and Oystercatcher, and it was a pleasure to listen to him for a few minutes.
The cabbage field, that forms the main part of our survey area, had a few passerines feeding between the rows of rotting veg, and included 60 Skylarks, nine Meadow Pipits, 46 Pied Wagtails, 14 Linnets and a Grey Wagtail. A walk around the perimeter of this field added five Brown Hares and we also put up three Snipe.
Interestingly, we didn't observe any geese this morning, but we did have eight Fieldfares, 40 Lapwings and two Little Egrets over.
At weekend we had a ringing session at the feeding station on our good friend's farm near Nateby, and we ringed 38 birds as follows (recaptures in brackets):
Great Tit - 4 (6)
Tree Sparrow - 7
Siskin - 2
Goldfinch - 2
Robin - 2
Blue Tit - 11 (7)
Chaffinch - 1
Chiffchaff - 1
Greenfinch - 7
Nuthatch - 1
Dunnock - (1)
Treecreeper - (1)
Both Chiffchaff and Siskin were new ringing records for the site, and I think that the Chiffie was the first that I have ever ringed in January.
A couple of days ago, we were back down by the Quay and on the Wyre estuary. It wasn't forecast to rain, but we had to shelter in the car for five minutes until the rain stopped! The tide was running in as we set off, and when we were back at the Quay just over an hour later, most of the mud was covered. The tide pushed any wildfowl out of the creeks, and pushed the waders on to ever diminishing areas where they could feed, and we had 105 Redshanks, ten Mallards, 23 Teal, three Black-tailed Godwits, a Curlew, 21 Wigeon (plus 77 'high' downstream) and 4 Knot.
A male Peregrine was good to see, and we had a Siskin over, so perhaps the cold weather is moving a few of them around.
We have got our Winter Gull Survey (WinGS) to do this weekend, and at the moment it is forecast to be wet and windy. Fingers crossed that it will improve before then, but there is some shelter to keep us out of the rain where we propose to count from. I'll let you know how we get on.
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