January 2015 archive

Jan 31 2015

Summary : January 2015

Summary : January 2015

New Species added to 2015 Year List in January= 82

Running Total for the 2015 UK So Far = 82

New UK Life List Birds In January = 0

Our Garden

The weather is very mixed. There have been some very light snow falls and some very cold days but the bird bath has seldom been frozen more than three mornings in a row so there has been no prolonged cold spell, although there were a couple of days at the end of the month where it snowed quite heavily. This soon disappeared though – at least in the suburbs.

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Jan 27 2015

Tatton Park : 27th January 2015

Tatton Park : 27th January 2015

The last birding group morning of January was to Tatton Park. We started off, as usual, at the Dog Wood entrance. There are dramatic changes there with what looks to be around one third of the trees in Dog Wood having been cut down. There was plenty of plant there but no one to ask what the works were about. It looks to be much more than routine thinning however. Thee felling had obviously disturbed the birds so there were virtually no birds on Tatton Mere – at least until the Melchet Mere end – and few in the woods themselves. A break in the felling did give us a chance to spot some Goldcrest and Treecreepers, however.

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Jan 24 2015

New Brighton Marine Lake 24th January 2015

New Brighton Marine Lake 24th January 2015

After we left Riverbank Road we went on to New Brighton to find the Purple Sandpipers again as Anne had missed them. A note to myself, NEVER go there on a weekend; parking is impossible ! Would we have a bit more luck that we had had on the birding group visit a few days prior ? Well the answer was a limited yes.

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Jan 24 2015

High Tide at Riverbank Road, Heswall 24th January 2015

High Tide at Riverbank Road, Heswall 24th January 2015

This was a ranger-led high-tide watch. The tide was 9.9 metres at 1.46pm and the meeting time was 11.30am. We got there in plenty of time after being at Shotwick Lane first. It was a sedentary affair with a row of people lined up on the edge of the car park that fronts the marsh. It is a good elevated position and in one direction you can see the marsh at Parkgate and on the other side you can see the boat yard by the Sheldrake Restaurant and further on to Thurstaston. We stood here and waited for what the tide would bring; it brought at least one huge surprise and a nice year tick.

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Jan 24 2015

Shotwick Boating Lake 24th January 2014

Shotwick Boating Lake 24th January 2014

I had been reading on the Dee Estuary Birding web site that there were Black-necked Grebes wintering on Shotwick boating lake. I was quite keen to see these but I was actually more taken with the report for the 17th January when someone had seen four species of Swan in the nearby fields. I was particularly keen to the Bewick’s swans that winter on the estuary every year so we started our day with a quick recce visit before going on to our main site of the day which was at Riverbank Road in Heswall for a high tide watch.

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Jan 20 2015

RSPB Burton Mere Wetlands 20th January 2015

RSPB Burton Mere Wetlands 20th January 2015

We finished up our birding group day on the Wirral with a visit to Burton Mere where we were in for a bit of a surprise as almost every body of water was frozen and there were very few birds there at all and what was there was to be seen in the woods. Accordingly the highlights were Great Spotted Woodpecker, Treecreeper, Song thrush and a nice flock of Redwing. We also saw a single  Kestrel but I missed the Marsh Harrier others managed to get before I arrived at the hide – I was too busy looking for Green Woodpecker on a a stump in the fields behind the car park.

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Jan 20 2015

New Brighton Marine Lake 20th January 2015

New Brighton Marine Lake 20th January 2015

Our birding group day out on the Wirral had started at Hoylake for the high tide. After we had seen what we could see there we moved on to New Brighton. I had seen Purple Sandpipers there on the 23rd December and got some nice video which the birding group had seen. Quite a few of the group had not seen this bird in the flesh so we thought we would try our luck.

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Jan 20 2015

High tide at Hoylake 20th January 2015

High tide at Hoylake 20th January 2015

The high tide at Hoylake was not huge – 9.9metres and we were a bit concerned that with high tide due at 10.42am that we wouldn’t have a very satisfactory experience as most of us would get there only an hour before. There was a chance the weather would be foul as well but, as it happened, it turned out to be quite a mild day and, although not a spectacular, it was at least better than I had experienced on the 23rd of December.

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Jan 13 2015

Pennington Flash 13th January 2015

Pennington Flash 13th January 2015

We missed the birding group visit to Wigan Flashes on the 6th so our first group session of the year was to Pennington Flashes. Although there were no outstanding sightings, Pennington is always reliable and a good was to get a good start to the annual species list. Goldeneye and Merganser were good winter birds and there were all the usual ducks as well. A kingfisher was a nice bird especially since it perched on a reed for quite some time affording nice views. Some people said they saw a second Kingfisher but I didn’t catch it.

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Jan 10 2015

Test posting using the wordpress app

After trying several other ways of blogging on the tab 2 I am wondering if this isn’t the easiest way after all

image

Waxwing

This works if you tap the bottom right button. With the photo you can also click the bottom right edit button and resize, align and name the photo.
Bold
Italic
Strike through
Underline

Then this has quotation marks around it. Now as long as I can figure out how to send it and add tags I will be happy enough with it.

As it happens I had to use the soft back key on the face of the pad to get back to the main WordPress interface. The blog had been saved as a draft, though, and could be further edited from there by hitting the edit button.

When you return you can tap on the post settings to do other usual stuff to the post

You should bear in mind that if you insert an image that is too large for WordPress, it will not warn you as the desktop version does. Instead it appears to upload the post but when you look at the posts page you see that the app has marked the post as “draft”. This enables you to reduce the size of the image before trying to repost