December 30, 2013 archive

Dec 30 2013

2013 Annual Summary

Summary 2013

We had several holidays or breaks where we had an opportunity to see birds we would not normally see or just to get our “year list” up to speed. These included our first guided birding during a visit to Norfolk and Cambridgeshire in March, a visit to Somerset and Dorset in May that enabled us to get to many wetland reserves, short trips in July and August to Angelsey and East Yorkshire and, best of them all, our trip to Scotland in October which took in visits to Montrose Basin, Loch of Strathbeg and environs and on our return a stopover at WWT Caerlaverock. In between we had three great days of birding in the Highlands of which more below. November was largely a birding group month for us as was the first half of December but in the last two weeks of December we went on a splurge of “twitching” that gave us some great year and life ticks.

Continue reading

Dec 30 2013

Summary December 2013

Summary December 2013

Garden

December started a little damp and temperatures were a bit up and down sometimes being quite mild and at other times cold. The garden birds are still finding food in the wild and the Blackbirds started the month still eating berries from the trees. The Robins and Tits are clearly still able to find some insects and you can see little columns of gnats spiraling above the middle of the lawn. On the 5th we had a brief visit by a Sparrowhawk eying up some Goldfinches. By the end of the month the weather had got much colder with strong winds some days but, even then, there seems to be quite a shortage of birds around. Even the Goldfinches are a bit on and off – surprising. We did get a small flock of Redwings a couple of gardens down and three Blackbirds are regularly visiting our garden now. The general impression, however, is of a dramatic lack of birds of any kind compared to most years ! A nice little end to the year was the visitation of a flock of forty Redwing on a tree at the end of our garden. They dropped down, six at a time, to feed on the Rowan Tree in our opposite neighbour’s garden. A single Mistle Thrush looked on a bit worried about the tree being degraded.

Continue reading