With the fog gone late afternoon and the Christmas shopping out of the way, for now, it was back to Ogden with a low expectancy which was just as well. Thats the problem with birding a local patch, you,ve to stick at it no matter what even though you,ve a good idea that its going to be poor because one of these visits will produce and make all the dips worthwhile. On this occasion it didnt.
The conditions were ideal with the cold NW dropped to calm with 100 % cloud cover.
The water was as this morning apart from several more gulls, mainly Commons with just 3 LBBs.
I spent 1 hour in passerine alley in the thought that if anything was there I,d get it.
Tit flocks were down with a few Great , Blue and Coal but no Long Tailed although with the amount of public around earlier in the afternoon most passerines would have headed deeper into the plantation.
Just 2 Goldcrests along with 5 Wrens, 3 Robins and 8 Dunnocks, otherwise it was down to the Chaffinch flock with a count now of around 40 birds, mainly females.
The flock were flitting to and from the Willows to feed in the vegetation on the banking but very mobile.
I checked through the flock each time they dropped onto the banking with hopes of Siskin, Redpoll or Brambling but can safely say none other than Chaffinch were present.
4 Cormorant were still present on and around the water whilst 2 flew over heading >E.
Again no Pinkies for us but several moving over Manchester way to the west of us. The only local skein today was 110 >W over Northowram courtesy AC who also had good numbers of Redwing whereas I had around 60 coming out of trees at Foxhill midday when the fog lifted.
HC got the bird of the day, again with persistence of his watch point at Oxenhope, when a Great Grey Shrike flew over at 1400 hrs, well spotted Compo, you make me sick !
BS