A day of snow showers on an icy cold NE>5 and cloudy skies.
My walk today took in Old Guy Road and Roper Lane ending up back down the Dailie fields.
A much quieter day bird wise with the cold wind keeping things down with only a couple of Skylark and a few Mipits briefly down Old Guy road and no Curlew today. A check of all the Wheatear hot spots around the cricket pitch and through the snicket into Roper Lane found none at all with the usual lull after seeing the first one or two. A few Lapwings were on the Raggalds Flood
along with a pair of Mallard with more Lapwings on the Pit Lane football pitches.
Just a brief sighting of 2 Linnet ,down the Dailies ,which quickly dropped down into the gorse bushes out of the wind. A few Blue and Great Tits were in the Hawthorns with LBB, Common and Herring gulls overhead heading >E to the Eccup roost which will soon be breaking up now.
With those of you doing a garden tick list whilst imprisoned at home, Mick Cunningham has just had a Marsh Tit in his Oxfordshire garden, the first since he moved there a few years ago, just shows that anything can turn up.
AC mentioned nocturnal flight movement on his blog. DCB is set up with dish and recorder and picks up an amazing number of species at night over his house, especially during autumn vis mig time. The only problem with this extension of birding is its very time consuming having to go through a night time of tape to hear the birds and then they all have to be identified which is not an easy task for the less common birds.
Thanks to all for the interesting comments on last nights blog and good to hear from Nick Carter at Hunmanby. The blog seemed to hit the spot bringing me more comments than if I,d found a mega. With this lock down threatened to go on till June at least I,ll probably be putting more nostalgia in the reports as I start to run out of ammunition.
Queensbury, local
2 Linnet
Great Tits
Blue Tits
2 Skylark
4 Collared Dove
c50 Starling flock
sev Meadow Pipits
3 Herring gull
4 LBB gull
2 Common gull
sev House Sparrows.
Todays advise, Avoid the news and papers etc, it only puts the fear of God in you..stick to the blogs.
Keep safe. BS