A very quiet start to the New Year…..
2nd January … Reports of a Red Necked Grebe over at Wykeham Lakes were very interesting. So today I went over for a look and eventually found the bird… But it was on the other side of the lake making photography impossible.
But never the less a nice bird to se!! I had some luck this afternoon, because the Sun came out!! Consequently the light was pretty good. The lakes themselves were pretty quiet however, I did have some nice Goldeneye fly-pasts which were nice to photograph.
8th January…. Today was really cold after a bitter frost last night. However it was nice walking conditions.There were reports of a couple of Hawfinches over at Paxton Bank, Dalby Forest. So I decided to go and have a look- needless to say not a sign of any Hawfinches.
However, I did get some pictures of Crossbill that were feeding in one of the Spruce trees which was nice to get in the bag.
Also as mentioned at the beginning of this post there was a very hard frost today. The local Robins were very confiding in the forest car park as they hungrily snapped up any crumbs dropped by walkers who decided to have a hot drink, sandwich,biscuit etc before concluding/starting their walk.
They certainly are enduring little birds!!
9th January….Almost to the year, I was visiting Thornton-le-Dale again to photograph the resident Dippers. And they showed very well.
Amazing how close you can get to the birds if you adopt a slow approach. The feathers are so well insulated and they show no signs of shock as they dive and walk through the bitterly cold water. Occasionally a bird would break into song … a great sound to hear in the depths of Winter. Very uplifting!!
And on the horizon is Gambia!!!
