a very pronounced bill.
A better morning with 100% cloud cover and early light showers on a gull friendly W>5.
First stop was a quick check of Lower Laithe above Leeshaw only to find a few small gulls and 3 Cormorant present. On then to Leeshaw with dark skies and light drizzle but making a good gull morning with the moderate W>5.
Herring gulls were moving through well with several stopping off at the water briefly before continuing west. Goosander numbers were down from yesterday with 5 males and 3 females all being constantly bombarded with Common and Black Headed gulls.
No Greylags today but most of the group were present in the Golden Plover field at Upper Marsh when I drove past earlier. Nothing else of note but an ideal mornings gull watching.
Short of time p.m. so a last light visit to Ogden to make sure there was nothing exotic on the water which amounted to around 100 pre roost small gulls.
Too late in the day to go passerine hunting though a small Tit flock held around 30 mixed Great and Blue along with 3 Chaffinch whilst a single Jay and a Great Spotted Woodpecker flew overhead into the plantation. Two Kingfishers were present along with a Dipper, appropriately at Dipper Dyke.
Ogden will be very busy now over the next 3 days with the once a year walkers who don on their specialist walking gear complete with whistle and Ordnance Survey map around their neck in a special waterproof cover plus 2 Voyager Trekking Poles ready to do a circuit of the water. This ritual usually occurs on Boxing Day followed by New Years Day after which their gear is put back into mothballs for another year.
Donkeys years ago HC and myself ,at 14 years old, used to catch buses to Gargrave then walk past Winterburn reservoir right over the moorland tops to Malham . On one particular occasion as we got to the highest point a dense fog came down cutting visibility to a few yards , which could have been nasty as we were somewhere near the top of Malham Cove. We were approached by a group of walkers fully kitted out in spiked boots, spats , arctic clothing and armed to the teeth with maps, whistles, compasses, torches and trekking poles who asked is the way back to Malham which we promptly showed them which direction to follow.
It must have been embarrassing for them to ask 2 young snotty nosed lads armed only with binoculars, a pair of cheap Coop Wellies and a plastic cagoule plus a rucksack containing 2 quart bottles of Dandelion and Burdock, these were the heavy glass bottles but we had to carry them back home to get a threpney bit ( 3 pence) back on the bottles, a few bags of crisps and the Observers Book of Birds, which still sits on my bookshelf more than 50 years on. Happy days.
Re Winter Solstice on last nights blog, I have received another theory of the shortest day being on the 22nd instead of the 21st. This was kindly sent by blog watcher John Kaye who states that this is determined by mid winters day in the Northern Hemisphere being when the South Pole points as near as it gets to the sun whilst the North Pole points directly away. This year it falls in the early hours of the 22nd whereas it nearly always occurs on the 21st. Many thanks to John, Malcolm and Hilary for showing an interest in my blog and taking the time to comment.
At least its over now and we,re ont reet road forrard.
Hope nobody has lost the will to live reading through this lot.
BS