Time and bad weather conditions stops play.

A combination of a late finish of family stuff  in the afternoon and the dreaded blue sky and blazing sun syndrome forced me to abandon the tea time birding session and catch up to some gardening, the front garden in the shade that is.
                                                   Being a dedicated upland birder and gaining no pleasure from scouring through walls of leaves looking for woodland birds I,ve been concentrating most of my efforts on my 2 favourite local reservoirs, Fly Flatts and Leeshaw, both only 15 minutes from home .
I,ve always watched these sites but now working part time its allowed me to intensify my watch on them which has proved a real bonus with the birds they,ve turned up recently.
                                                 Ogden, Mixenden and Cold Edge dams are used as a fall back but tend to not get the volume of birds through although Mixenden has thrown up some real beauties in the past but recently badly disturbed with so called fishermen, not the genuine anglers which present no real problem. Ogden is now a crowd puller and unusable at weekends and school holidays, especially in good weather. I use this site in bad conditions when the higher reservoirs are fog bound. Ogden can shine in autumn and winter when wildfowl are on the move.

Over the years Fly Flatts has provided me with 112 species including
18 Wader species
17 Wildfowl species
10 Raptor Species
6 Gull species

Closely followed by Leeshaw with a species list of  92 including
14 Wader species
16 Wildfowl species
7 Raptor species
7 Gull species.

Not to be knocked, Ogden has provided me with 120 species but this higher species count includes woodland species also.

Stick at your local area and even though the rewards can be slow coming the pleasure is much greater when they arrive.
BS