Tuesday 8th January

Towards the end of last week, I did a bit of a wander round locally to investigate the red kite trail a bit more and possibly check for further merlin activity, of which there was none.

It was a bit depressing to see how much litter had been dumped on the roadside verge down Spen Lane, all

Tree

things that could have been placed in a recycling bin. You can't hold out much hope for people changing their habits to save the oceans when many still think it's ok to casually dump household waste.

Anyway, what I did see was a treecreeper creeping and a couple of goldfinches, proving that they are in the area even if they don't visit my niger seed.  Then by the bridleway, I caught sight of this tree.  Too white to be a normal silver birch, I'm sure that I've come across it before and noted it in this diary.  But without any leaves showing, I was unable to re-identify it so will probably have to wait until the summer.

Reports of a sociable snow bunting on St Mary's Island led me to attempt another twitch.  In spite of scouring all the grassy areas I could find I didn't see it.  The weather was a good deal less hospitable than had been forecast so it wasn't a day for hanging around for a long period.  I was however glad that I took the trouble to go over the causeway to the lighthouse, when I happened to come across this brent goose working its way through the rocks on the foreshore.

Brent Goose

Like the snow bunting, it doesn't appear much on the west coast so I'd never seen one before I moved.

Otherwise, it was quiet on the inland pond apart from a lot of teal and mallard.  I think there were a few greenshank too, though it was hard to hold the binoculars still enough to tell in the frisky wind.  As the tide started to move in, a few others started to appear, notably a healthy flight of lapwing flying around over the sea's edge.