Pre-Christmas birding

Christmas finally gave me a chance to get around locally, a bit more than I usually get a chance to. On Wednesday (17/12) I used my last day of holiday to get up to the north of the county. I started off at Blatherwyke church which, a couple of winters ago held a small flock of Hawfinch and was definately worth a check. Sadly no Hawfinch, though did have a Peregrine unsuccessfully attacking the local Woodpigeon population! Also a flock of around 15 Siskin by the church.

Moving round to the lake and the local population of Mandarin appears to be hanging on, counting at least 12 (8 drakes) on the western lake. Also of note was a single Pink Footed Goose with a large number of Greylags. A Kingfisher was hunting the shoreline and there were as usual for Blatherwyke, good numbers of Wigeon.

A visit to nearby Wakerley Wood yielded nothing more than common woodland birds and no Crossbills, while spending some time at Fineshade Top Lodge again wasn't exactly fruitful with the usual large numbers of Red Kites, although 5 Lesser Redpoll feeding on alders in the overflow car park was nice.

I finished up at nearby Deene Park Lake which had a surprisingly large number of wildfowl with probably 100 each of both Gadwall & Teal as well as a single Shelduck.

Having missed the Wicksteed Ring-Necked Duck, news from Mike Alibone that one had turned up at Billing GPs on Wednesday (24/12) was too big a draw and so I popped over during the early afternoon. I eventually managed to gain distant views of it feeding with a tight flock of Tufties, Pochard & Wigeon right in the NE corner of the lake. Pretty pants views but glad to see it and in fact my first county tick for quite a while I think. Sadly no pics due to the distance!