The first bird  I heard this morning was a Little Owl calling at 4am ,just as I was getting up for work, I suppose it"s one of the benefits of the job.The Coal Tit and a Lesser Redpoll came to the niger feeder again, considering I had not recorded Lesserc Redpoll on the patch till this year I seem to have seen quite a few this year,although I suspect that all the records relate to the three birds I found at the back end of the year. I also have a niger feeder this year so that may be the difference ,as they say in Waynes World ""If you build they will come"".
A flock of Long Tailed Tits were buzzing around in the garden as well ,so when I left the house I was sure it would be a productive walk, just shows you how wrong you can be.The major numbers were 800 plus Starling and at least 1000 plus Assorted Gulls ,Black Headed ,Lesser Black Backed ,Common and a few Herring Gulls on the now receding floodwaters.Its easy to forget that many of these Gulls would of come from the Baltic and Northern Europe . A small flock of 3 Pied Wagtails had 2 Meadow Pipits tagging along. The rest of the list was made up of Kestrel, Buzzard ,Green Woodpecker and a single Redwing.