Local patch

Goat willow, Barton Clough

Another cool day getting progressively greyer and clouduer as the day progressed. And another morning of assorted birdsong in the garden, though for the first time this week I slept through the dawn chorus. Looking at the bird reports there's evidentially a nocturnal passage of common scoters going on this week, all I've been hearing is Network Rail workmen and the production lines at Kellogg's. I've bought a fresh giant pine cone in response to hints by the spadgers, long-tailed tits and the goldcrest. I have a pile of giant cones in the corner of the garden, I dare say they'll become Winter roosting sites for ladybirds and lacewings (he wrote optimistically).

• Black-headed Gull 1 overhead
• Blackbird 1
• Blue Tit 1
• Carrion Crow 1
• Collared Dove 1
• Dunnock 1
• Great Tit 2
• House Sparrow 7
• Jackdaw 2
• Magpie 1
• Robin 1
• Song Thrush 1
• Starling 1
• Woodpigeon 2
• Wren 1

No black-headed gulls on the school playing field again today, just half a dozen each of jackdaws and woodpigeons and a very pale second-Winter herring gull.

I had a wander round the local patch which was quiet in numbers but loud in titmice, wrens and dunnocks singing from the sidelines. What I thought was one resident pair of crows in the park turns out to be two: the pair nesting by Barton Dock Road and another pair to-ing and fro-ing between the line of poplars and the primary school. Good to see the nuthatch is still around, it was feeding in one of the elderberry bushes with the usual male chaffinch. Also good to be seeing a couple of pairs of greenfinches flying about.

I had a long chat (long listen really) with a chap who'd come along for a sit down, a smoke and a packet of Jaffa cakes. "I used to come here all the time for a sit down and a smoke. I remember when there was a rail line here, and when that car showroom over the road was a container yard." I didn't have the heart to tell him that before long this quiet stretch of very raw nature is likely to be another cluster of prefab warehouses.

• Black-headed Gull 1 overhead
• Blackbird 5
• Blue Tit 3
• Carrion Crow 3
• Chaffinch 1
• Coal Tit 1
• Dunnock 1
• Feral Pigeon 17 overhead
• Goldfinch 7
• Great Tit 7
• Greenfinch 5
• House Sparrow 3
• Lesser Black-backed Gull 4 overhead
• Long-tailed Tit 1
• Magpie 12
• Mistle Thrush 1
• Nuthatch 1
• Robin 8
• Song Thrush 1
• Woodpigeon 20
• Wren 3