Cold and grey sums the day up really, very miserable weather indeed! Walking around Swinemoor most of the regular birds were in their regular places. A few more small passerines were viewable today, mostly feeding in the mud. The increased water level seems to have pushed a number of soil dwelling creatures to the surface and birds such as Chaffinches, Redwings, Fieldfares and Starlings were taking advantage. In the trees a Mistle Thrush was making a noise and a Great Tit was hopping around looking for food..

On the floods huge numbers of Lapwings were present with over 200 birds along with 60-70 Golden Plover. A total of around 25 Redshank were dotted around the common and were easily seen as they noisily moved around. Feeding amongst the Lapwings were 10 Dunlin and the usual groups of Snipe could be found amongst the grassy tufts.

Today the whole place smelt quite bad: it seemed like horse dung rotting in the water which won’t do much for the quality of the grassland, although it didn’t seem to bother the wading birds roosting and feeding amongst it, which also included a single male Ruff.

Along by the ditch the, by now, usual group of 5 Curlew were probing the mud alongside their colleagues the Moorhens. Below shows the area they seem to favour, peculiarly, they appear to prefer feeding under the tree.

Whilst watching the curlews a group of 3 Mute Swans flew overhead and flushed the curlews up: they then flew around uttering their distinctive call. A couple of other flyover birds were two Cormorants and an adult Lesser Black-backed Gulls.

Winter flocks of small gulls get quite large on Swinemoor, but at the moment only small numbers of Black-headed Gulls and Common Gulls are present with just about 20 in total today. A Grey Heron stood hunched up in the middle of the floods today looking like the uninspiring weather had also got to the avian inhabitants of Swinemoor as well as myself.

A truly dismal day was at least made a little brighter by a cruising male Sparrowhawk as I left the common and a group of noisy Long-tailed Tits in excitement at its passing.

birds, birding