The second birding group outing of the year was to Marbury. I went despite having been there twice recently in failed attempts to find Hawfinches. This time, with a bit of waiting around, they eventually did show and, in fact, I got pretty good scoped views of three Hawfinches at the very top of a bare tree.
Other than that there wasn’t much else of great note though there was a good, large, group of about forty Redwing. Common Gull on the mere was nice but after the Hawfinches we all felt rather like “mission accomplished” and anything else was going to be less impressive. I was particularly keen to see these Hawfinches as there have been so many European Hawfinches irrupting into Britain this winter. It is assumed that it is because of some failure of their food supply in mainland Europe. At Marbury they had largely been feeding on the Yew trees.