So a new year and the birding clock was set back to zero, so a New Years Day afternoon was called for at Upton. It was a rather dismal wet day, our original plan had been for a walk along the canal at Kinver again with a nice baguette at the Vine, but firstly the as I said the weather wasn't conducive to walking without any shelter and we discovered that the Vine was only doing a carvery and with the excesses of Christmas we weren't up for that. So Upton it was.
We opted to go the Moors as that would mean the shortest amount of walking in the rain.
As you can imagine it was fairly quiet, I think all the birds were sleeping of their New Year hangovers. Though seen from the Lapwing Hide some Snipe did appear some distance away:
This Gadwall and Mallards had the right idea with the weather,
just tuck up and keep warm.
There were plenty of Shoveler, Pochard and Tufted Duck about along with a solitary Shelduck. We spent an hour or so here then wandered over to the Water Rail hide and did indeed get a glimpse of a Water Rail. The feeders to the right proved productive with Greenfinch,
Reed Bunting,
Bullfinch, Chaffinch, Dunnock, Robin and Tits showing well, although I gave up on photography as the light was now terrible. we tried the Jacons hide as well just in case any Otters put in an appearance but with the light going we gave up and having had a late night, we were tired and cold. So our first birding afternoon of the year gave us a decent start for our 2017 tally with 35 species.
35 is not a bad start to the year at all! An interesting read.
ReplyDeleteI have just returned to the world of blogging with a new blog A Year on The Common (http://hartleburycommon.blogspot.co.uk/). I'm finally got my mojo back after giving up Shenstone Birder a few years back.
Cheers Jason, will certainly have a look at your blog
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