Monday 21 January 2013

The 3in of snow that fell yesterday was still very evident this morning
View from my upstairs window over to the Greenhouse Grounds

Feeling not too well today, I took the day off work, the school was closed anyway due to the snow, so I spent a good part of the day watching the Garden feeders. However, I did spend 40 minutes out at my seat at Migrant Alley, just to get some fresh air  :-)

I was hoping to pick up some hard weather movement, and there was just a small bit going on, as well as the usual WOODPIGEONS, ROOKS and JACKDAWS moving around the local area, I also noted a few HERRING, BLACK HEADED and COMMON GULLS, all looking much smarter than usual in the light reflecting of the snow cover. I also recorded a flock of 16 LAPWING going through, and lastly, of more interest was a nice flock of 33 SKYLARK (63) the first seen this year.

I was soon back at home, not wanting to get chilled and make myself feel worse, and started to watch the comings and goings at the garden feeders, I was surprised by the lack of of Tits and Finch's, but they were made up for by the amount of Thrushes coming in, 14 BLACKBIRDS, the FIELDFARE plus a remarkable 3 SONGTHRUSHES. The first visit from a HOUSE SPARROW this year was most welcome, the 27th species to visit the garden so far this month, which is the best monthly figure achieved in the 12 years of recording my garden birds, it is a record jointly held with the December tallies of 2009 and 2012, plus march 2011, so just one more species this month will take the title out right  :-)

Visits from the likes of WREN, JAY, JACKDAW, MAGPIE, GREEN and GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKERS, NUTHATCH and WOODPIGEONS as well as all the regular stuff, made the days list up to an outstanding 21 species for the day - much better than the whole of most months!

I of course got lots of images today, here's a few, i'll post the others up on the slower photographic days this week  :-)
Songthrush
Songthrush
Green Woodpecker
Blackbird

8 comments:

Lancs and Lakes Outback Adventure Wildlife Safaris said...

Nice pics again there Warren - didn't really get light here today.
Any thoughts as to what #30 might be, plenty of time for it to drop by - what about a woodcock?

Cheers

Daveyan

Warren Baker said...

Davyman,
There were some Moorhen tracks in my garden this morning, havn't had one (seen) this month yet, they only come in when its very snowy.

Anonymous said...

Hope you feel better soon mate.
We had 5 > 6 inch of snow overnight/this morning..but nothing decent dropped in to feed.

Warren Baker said...

Cheers Dean,
Still time for something different to turn up, no warm(er) weather till Saturday

Marianne said...

Hope you feel better soon. The garden bird photos are lovely. I can think of (lots of) worse ways to spend a day!

ShySongbird said...

I meant to mention the 'man flu' yesterday, hope you soon feel a lot better Warren! Lovely photos again.

We had a lot of snow fall on top of the stuff from earlier in the week yesterday. As well as Fieldfare today it brought a Redwing into the garden :-)

Pete Woodruff said...

Love your pics of the Song Thrush and hope you feel much improved by tomorrow Warren.

Alan Pavey said...

Great pics Mate you made good use of your day off, i do the same if i'm off ill, you just have look out the window now and then :-)