No the relatives have not arrived from Cumbria ! The garden was graced by 2 Lesser Redpolls on the feeders today the first birds since the back end of the year a year tick for the patch and always great birds to see .
We added 6 new species today with the above, Red Legged Partridge ( 5 today), a flyover Linnet (the first for a number of weeks ), Sparrowhawk, Cormorant over, Canada Geese on the floods.
On the patch itself there were more normal numbers of Redwing with 100 plus and Fieldfare with 110 plus seen the rest having moved on.
Only 4 Skylark today but I did not walk through their favoured field so there are probably more around.
2 Bullfinch in the hedgerows were nice ,and there were 6 Stock Dove about. The only other raptors were 2 low flying Buzzards .
The best of the rest were Green Woodpecker, Greater Spotted Woodpecker and a single Mistle Thrush.
The patch list now stands at 47 , not bad for the 12th of January
