JANUARY TO 12th FEBRUARY 2014

I can't believe it's nearly the middle of February and my patch list has just started to pick up a bit after a rather disappointing January, when only 59 species were seen. At the same time last year the list stood at 72!! This is probably due to my limited walking after the saga of my ankle and the appalling weather.
Still, back to the patch and waiting till 28th December for a Pochard there were 4 records in January with two being seen on the 7th with a Tufted drake.

Pochards.

There seems to be a lot of Redpolls around since last month with a single Common Redpoll(54) with them on the 18th Jan.

Into February and on the 1st of the month there were 2 Common Redpolls with a flock of 45+ lesser Redpolls. The first Woodcock was seen on the same day plus a pair of Greylag Geese.

The 2nd produced a pair of Teal and a Water Rail of note.On Monday 10th, 3 Egyptian Geeese flew S/E over the lake and this morning I had a pair of Grey Wagtails over to bring the years total to 66.

Finally, even though it doesn't seem to want to stop raining, it was great to see some Snowdrops in bloom a week or so ago.

Snowdrops in bloom.