The weather since New Year has discouraged excursions and cycle trips except for the most hardy.
With some reluctance and in need of exercise, I decided to take a walk in Chopwell Woods on Monday afternoon in freezing but sunny conditions. I always expect the most common form of animal to be seen in Chopwell Woods is the domesticated wolf, and fear that I won't see anything like the amount of things I would see in the garden anyway. On Monday, this comprised blue tit, great tit, coal tit, long-tailed tit, sparrow, chaffinch, bullfinch (3) and nuthatch as well as robin and blackbird.
This fear was largely fulfilled - just a few robins and tits around until I noticed an area near Victoria Garesfield where some birds were advancing from a patch of evergreens to drink in a small stream that hadn't frozen.
Some distance away using a lot of zoom, it turned out that one of the birds showing flashes of red turned out not to be a robin, but a redwing.
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| Redwing |
Now this wasn't really a one-off as it's clear from what others have been posting that there is an influx of redwing in the area just now.
