15 February 2012

After the excitement of Sunday and a busy few days at work I was looking forward to a morning stroll around the park, although not very productive in quality of birds it was never the less a decent morning, much much warmer at 5c with pretty much all the ice gone from the main lake and around 40% still ice covered on the boating lake, the small pools in the reserve still remain pretty much iced over, wind was a light WNW, visit from 07.20 til 09.05.

On the boating lake there were 4 Tufted Duck with a further 31 on the main lake, 7 Mute Swans were on the boating lake and the resident pair on the main, just a single Great Crested Grebe remains after 3 were seen yesterday and Pochard have nosedived to just 3 males, a couple of Jackdaws flew over calling, Herring Gulls were hard to count as some appeared then disappeared and what were possibly new birds came in, but there were 3 present at any one time and probably more went through, what I at first thought and identified as a Peregrine at the time was actually a Kestrel, it was carrying something in it's talons and just wasn't flying as a Kestrel normally does, it's jizz seemed more Peregrine like, but having checked some details in a reference book I now realise I made a mistake and it was just a Kestrel, at least 3 or 4 Common Gulls were knocking around all adults and a Grey Heron flew across the back of the main lake.
At least 3 Pied Wagtails were around the playing field area and a couple of Mistle Thrushes, in the old sewage works a Jay flew over and a male Bullfinch was along the stream, 2 Stock Doves were on the old gas works plus a Great Spotted Woodpecker, in the reserve along the middle path a small flock of Tits held singles of Goldcrest, Coal Tit and Treecreeper, by the bottom gate a single Willow Tit plus a Siskin flew over, 2 Greenfinches were along the sidings and finally 2 Greylag Geese were with the Canada Geese on the playing field, a Westport year tick for me (the resident ones are domestic, in case anyone is wondering).