A real windy morning at Fly Flatts on a S>5 but much milder at 6 degrees with broken cloud and sunshine.
A much quieter morning with no surprise visitors today in the form of yesterdays Whoopers though DJS had 5 next door at Cold Edge. I checked Cold Edge at 0800 hrs and again at 1000 hrs from the top road with nothing at those times unless they were under the east banking.
Only birds this morning were the 2 Ringed Plovers, a Buzzard being mobbed by Curlew over the east ridge and the usual Canadas and Mallards.
Around 30 Fieldfare were in the Nolstar field on my way home.
I stopped by the Crossroads Inn at Wainstalls to check the Black Headed gulls for a Med and found 1 adult to have a leg ring. When I got home and checked the number, White VS 20, it was a bird I saw as a juvenile at Ogden back in 18/11/2012 , nine years ago. The bird was ringed at
Neumunster, North Germany so it is back around the area nine years on.
Back to Ogden this afternoon with a mission to photograph the impossible, Treecreeper and Goldcrest in the dark woodland of the west bank. Luckily I soon located the winter tit flock after a dip yesterday, this was probably due to the rise in temperature today getting the birds out feeding.
After standing and waiting I was soon surrounded by the 4 common tit species as well as at least 10 Treecreepers and over 20 Goldcrest. Not an easy task in the dark conditions with constantly flitting birds among the branches and having to have the exposure very low and the ISO very high leaving me open to blurs with working hand held.
After just over 1 hour of standing near motionless and putting up with passing public and dogs I came away with 263 images of which around 70% were deleted but happy with the ones I kept.
BS