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.
Birding Group
The first birding group day of the month took us to Burton Mere Wetlands just as it had done in November and we had another view of a Stonechat and nice views of Fieldfare and Redwing and our first Siskin of the winter. We were planning on going to Hoylake and Parkgate on Thursday the 5th December but we had to call it off at the last minute due to weather warnings. As it happens we made a good decision because it turned out that the car park at the old baths at Parkgate was flooded half an hour before high tide and at New Brighton, just around the corner from Hoylake this was the situation :
New Brighton at High Tide
It was a shame to have missed a chance to see the sea all the way up to the prom at Parkgate but there were driving dangers that were not to be dismissed so we delayed our visit until the following Saturday the 7th. On the 7th we went to Burton Mere Wetlands again where we managed to miss the Little Stint and then went on to Hoylake and Parkgate again. At Hoylake we had great views of a Peregrine attacking a flock of thousands of Dunlin and although the Knot / Dunlin experience wasn’t as spectacular as it has been it was still really good. After we left Hoylake we dropped down to Parkgate for late lunch we had the additional bonus of a Great White Egret on the marsh.
Tuesday the 9th was the last birding group visit of the “term” and as usual we went to Dunham Massey where we did a bit of birding before having lunch and formulating the itinerary for the next term.
Birding Days Out
With the end of the birding group term we decided to do some solo birding to try to get a few more “ticks” before the year was out. The first of these days out, on the 12th, took us to RSPB Marshside where we went in search of the Baikal Teal that had been seen there regularly. Unfortunately it seems to have left the day we went. We did get splendid, if brief, views of a Long-tailed Duck and also a Ross’s Goose that may or may not be an escape bird. On the 14th we drove over to Broomhead Reservoir where we hoped to see Two-barred and Common Crossbills which we managed to do, getting prolonged and good views of the former. If the Goose can be counted as a tick then this meant that we had three new life ticks in a week and had managed to exceed our 2012 species list as well. On the 22nd we squeezed in a last birding day before Christmas. With a slight gap in the weather we managed to get over to Pensarn where we managed to see the Hoopoe that had been there for a while. This gave us another year and life tick. A last bit of twitching saw us go to Burton Marsh on the 28th where we saw the American Buff-bellied Pipit and a pair of Siberian Chiffchaffs. Another year / life “tick” and a nes sub-species in the Chiffchaff.
In birding terms we haven’t really seen that many birds at all but we have to start somewhere and as the end of 2013 approaches we have seen 183 species of birds in Britain this year (214 life list) which is fivemore species than last year and includes quite a few lifers (See annual summary). After we left Burton Marsh we popped into the Burton Mere Wetland centre but it was largely the usual suspects there and the Little Stint eluded us yet again !