A new year, a new list

Common gull, Lostock School

The cold weather, and my refilling all the feeders, had the garden full of birds all morning except for a couple of minutes when they thought they'd seen a sparrowhawk (I couldn't see one but it may have gone over the rooftop before I got to the window). I'm used to having two or three blackbirds in the garden, today five of them chased each other around the birdbath. I'm not sure whether the goldcrest feeding in the cherry tree was the same one that spent a long while foraging in the sycamores on the railway embankment and I must have missed most of the usual flock of long-tailed tits today.

• Black-headed Gull 3 overhead
• Blackbird 5
• Blue Tit 2
• Coal Tit 2
• Collared Dove 3
• Dunnock 2
• Goldcrest 1
• Great Tit 2
• Herring Gull 1 overhead
• House Sparrow 22
• Lesser Black-backed Gull 1 overhead
• Long-tailed Tit 2
• Magpie 2
• Robin 1
• Starling 6
• Woodpigeon 3
• Wren 1

Robin
Poses like this are why I don't immediately cut back the flower stems when they've finished.

I had a New Year wander round my local patch over lunchtime. The park was quite busy with birds with plenty of thrushes about, mostly blackbirds. Four fieldfares called from the top of one of the trees near the bowling green then flew off to parts unknown. At the other side of the park, by the Old Hall footpath, three redwings were feeding in the leaf litter with a song thrush and a couple of blackbirds. The usual pair of mistlethrushes split their time between feeding on the football pitch and defending the last of the berries on the rowan trees on St. Modwen's Road.

As always there were blue tits and great tits but they never organise themselves into a proper flock. It was surprising to see a pair of nuthatches feeding in the trees by the park boundary, I've only ever seen singles here before.

The old cornfield was very quiet aside from magpies and a pair each of blue and great tits until I started my walk back along the old railway bed to the footpath when a dozen goldfinches flew in and started feeding in the tops of the poplars.

• Black-headed Gull 2 overhead
• Blackbird 18
• Blue Tit 8
• Carrion Crow 3
• Common Gull 6
• Dunnock 3
• Feral Pigeon 21 overhead
• Fieldfare 4
• Goldfinch 15
• Great Tit 7
• Herring Gull 1 overhead
• House Sparrow 8
• Lesser Black-backed Gull 6 overhead
• Long-tailed Tit 2
• Magpie 15
• Mistle Thrush 2
• Nuthatch 2
• Redwing 3
• Robin 4
• Song Thrush 3
• Starling 6
• Woodpigeon 10
• Wren 3