A decent day with a light SW>4 at 7 degrees with bright skies and some sunshine.
First job was to check the gull fields at Thornton which were very quiet with around 100 small gulls. On then to Ogden to find around another 100 small gulls and 2 3cy Herring gulls. A steady search through the Black Headed failed to come up with a Med gull.
A tit flock was present in Alders along the west bank with several Long Tailed and Coal as well as the usual Blue and Great, whats happened to the Siskins and Redpolls this winter?
A Great Spotted Woodpecker was hammering away at a tree with 2 Nuthatches nearby.
A second check of the gull fields mid afternoon failed to find a single gull so I stopped off at Soil Hill for a scan around distant fields to see where the gulls had got to. Empty fields as far as the eye could see and very few at Oxenhope though it was still early in the day.
A text on the new formed bird group, Bird News and Alerts Local, from MP this morning said muck spreading was in progress at the top of Sugden with good numbers of gulls building so possibly all our gulls had headed for the Cullingworth fields, one of KMs hot spots.
Otherwise on the hill, 2 Skylarks were up singing with 3 Meadow Pipits on the deck.
I spoke to the Fly Flatts YW man at Ogden this morning who told me Fly Flatts was still out of bounds when he went up there Monday with still deep snow drifts on the road and down the entrance track. The road is also blocked with abandoned vehicles which had to be left in the snow and have since been trashed by the local scumbags.
BS