February 2019 : Summary
UK Species Year List to February : 103
Total UK Species in February : 100
New “Year Ticks” in February : 31
New “Life Ticks” in February : 1
February 2019 archive
Feb 28 2019
February 2019 : Monthly Summary
Feb 26 2019
Birding Group Sandbach Flashes 26th February 2019
We had a nice morning out on a beautiful sunny day – unbelievable for February but we have had a few recently. We had a year tick Green Sandpiper and Tree Sparrow and Common Snipe were more regular ticks, but still first for the year. A nice group of male and female Goosanders were colourful additions to the usual ducks (plenty of Wigeon) and there were even a few Black-tailed Godwits. Not a fantastic collection of birds – but still thirty-six species – but a nice morning out.
Feb 22 2019
Overnight Stay at Parkgate for High Tide on the Wirral 21-22 February 2019
Short-eared Owl, Parkgate
We have been planning an overnight visit to Parkgate so we could get the chance to see the birds of prey coming into the overnight roost at Neston. WIth a high tide of 10.12 metres at 12:20pm we thought that if we stayed over we could get two high tides at Parkgate and the evening roost so this is what we decided to do, staying at the Ship Hotel overnight.
Feb 19 2019
Birding Group visit to Hoylake, New Bighton and Parkgate : 19th February 2019
The birding group visit for 19th February was to Hoylake and New Brighton for the high-ish tide of 9.6 metres at 10:48pm but this left us time to add on a visit to Parkgate after those two places and this gave us probably the best one hour of raptor watching we have ever had.
Feb 14 2019
Blythe’s Reed Warbler – Hope Carr Nature Reserve, 14th February 2019
We saw on Birdguides that the Blythe’s Reed Warbler thathas been around at Hope Carr Nature Reserve had been showing early in the day on the perimiter fence at the sewage works at the end of Hope Carr Terrace. It has been around for a while and we tried to see it the previous Tuesday when the birding group dropped in there after the visit to Pennington Flash. We didn’t have any luck then but we thought we could get there early enough to stand a chance. It had been seen there around 9:30am and we got there about an hour later.
Feb 12 2019
Connah’s Quay, Shotwick, Burton and Parkgate 12th February 2019
We were supposed to go to Frodsham with the birding group on the 12th but they decided they were going to park on the motorway bridge and walk from there. Several people opted out of this for their own reasons but I just thought that there wasn’t much likelihood of seeing anything much there that could not be seen more easily elsewhere, so we decided to go up to the Wirral instead and I think that our decision was vindicated with forty-five species sighted including Short-eared Owl and Hen Harrier.
Feb 11 2019
Sale Water Park 11th February 2019
In a two hour walk around Sale Water Park (4 miles in 2 hours !!) I managed to encounter three professional dog walkers with between 6 and 8 dogs each and in total around 60-70 dogs during that 2 hour period; two of these jumped up on me and the second of these led to a slight altercation with the owner who explained the dogs behaviour with “it’s a dog!!” – as if this explained everything. She was genuinely amazed that anyone would be less that charmed by her fucking Jack Russell and its shitty paws.
Bird-wise, though it was pretty good with a total of twenty-nine species seen including year tick Jay, Great Crested Grebe, Little Grebe and Ring-necked Parakeet.
A good walk with plenty of bird song and plenty of species spoiled by the epidemic of dogs.
Bird Sightings Sale Water Park 11th February 2019
| Mute Swan | 24 |
| Gadwall | 4 |
| Mallard | 12 |
| Northern Shoveler | 8 |
| Common Merganser | 1 |
| Little Grebe | 3 |
| Great Crested Grebe | 1 |
| Great Cormorant | 1 |
| Grey Heron | 6 |
| Common Buzzard | 1 |
| Common Moorhen | 2 |
| Common Coot | 10 |
| Black-headed Gull | 30 |
| Lesser Black-backed Gull | 2 |
| Common Kestrel | 1 |
| Rose-ringed Parakeet | 6 |
| Eurasian Jay | 1 |
| Eurasian Jackdaw | 40 |
| Carrion Crow | 6 |
| Coal Tit | 6 |
| Great Tit | 8 |
| Eurasian Blue Tit | 6 |
| Long-tailed Tit | 12 |
| Eurasian Nuthatch | 3 |
| Eurasian Treecreeper | 1 |
| European Robin | 3 |
| Eurasian Blackbird | 4 |
| Redwing | 1 |
| Song Thrush | 2 |
Feb 05 2019
Birding Group : Pennington Flash 5th February 2019
The first birding group trip for us in a while was supposed to be North Wales but the recent poor weather sent us, instead, to Pennington Flash where, surprisingly enough, it was actually quite mild with no wind to add the generally low temperatures. As usual for Pennington there was a good variety of birds including lots of Goosander and really good views of a Kingfisher.