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| A snowy foggy morning. |
A real horror of a day after heavy overnight snow continuing to mid morning before turning to drizzle for the rest of the day. The fog persisted throughout and looks to be set in for tomorrow morning.
I,ll be getting birding withdrawal symptoms at this rate with 3 days grounded and not much prospect until the end of the year until the snow clears from the tracks to Fly Flatts and Leeshaw.
Killing some time this afternoon at home, I,m like a caged bear when I,m stuck in the house, I checked through some old reports of sightings at Fly Flatts of what I call mega rarities for this area, and the possibility of what can turn up when you watch a local patch is mind blowing.
Admittedly some of these reports are over 200 years old but this makes the achievement of spotting these species even more amazing, given the poor optics and lack of scopes and mega zoom cameras.
This is a list of 19 of the top mega,s :-
Fly Flatts
Slavonian Grebe
Black Necked Grebe
Bewicks Swan
Eider Duck, female
Pochard ........................... Nearest one I,ve had is Mixenden
Long Tailed Duck.............This one I managed to see.
Honey Buzzard.................Had one nearby at TMR
Little Stint
Curlew Sandpiper
Purple Sandpiper .............Found 1 nearby at Soil Hill
Wood Sandpiper
Arctic Skua
Great Skua
Little Gull
Little Tern
Black Tern
Rock Pipit.................... Nearest one TMR
Hooded Crow
Lapland Bunting.......... Had 1 on the west bank many moons ago. Other nearest, Soil Hill and TMR.
References thanks to :-
Birds of Halifax, NCD
Halifax Birdwatchers Club annual reports, NCD
Bradford Ornithological Group annual reports, various authors.
Vertebrate Fauna of the Halifax Parish. Halifax Scientific Society, IM
Just imaging turning up at Fly Flatts with an Eider duck on the water and a Great Skua overhead,
the mind boggles.
BS