Home thoughts

 I was unaccountably tired today so I let plans A to D slide and just went out for a potter round and a bit of shopping. I was talking about the November slump the other day, I thought I'd have a look at my data on BirdTrack to see if it's a real thing or just a perception. I've got most of my records for the past thirty-two years on there now so it's a fairly good sample to play with.

Records per month over the past thirty-two years

And there it is, it's a thing. December's more understandable: there's very limited daylight and there's the Christmas period to negotiate without appearing to be antisocial. November's a slump. Now I'm properly aware of it I'll try and manage my way out of it.

The spadgers have been out in force in the back garden. While they were lurking in the bushes I've been struggling to get reliable counts so I've been recording minimum numbers. The very pale youngster of the Summer is but a memory though there are a couple of young females that have very sandy underparts and white feathers in their tails. I've not seen much of the alpha males of either of the families, most of the males are quite young but there is one older bird which always stands out because he has bright white cheeks. On a gloomy day he's easy to mistake for a great tit on first glance. The great tits, coal tits and blue tits are regulars and the robin's busy defending its Winter territory. I see the coal tits more often at the station, they like the overgrown leylandii hedge behind the garden shed by the Manchester platform. I quite often see a goldcrest here, too. I expect I've been missing it in my garden because my bit of leylandii's been hidden behind the rowan tree.

Gulls

Over on the school playing field there were the usual couple of dozen black-headed gulls and at least one lesser black-back and I could hear a common gull (I can't point my binoculars that way on school days). While I was looking at the stats for November I thought I'd have a look at the data on gulls on this field.

Lostock School — black-headed gull records per month

Black-headed gulls are pretty much fixtures and it's not often that a record is of less than a dozen birds. If the y-axis was number of birds rather than number of records the Winter peaks would be two or three times higher. Most disappear to their breeding grounds in April and May, leaving behind a few non-breeders.

Lostock School — lesser black-backed gull records per month

Lesser black-backs are the large gulls of Summer. They're a constant presence though it's not often there's more than half a dozen of them at a time. They breed nearby on the factory roofs in Trafford Park. Large flocks congregate on Salford Quays in Autumn and Winter but they don't head this way to feed.

Lostock School — herring gull records per month

Herring gulls are the large gulls of Winter. Most are subadult birds, late Summer and Autumn are the peak time for adults to drop in. There's a constant churn of herring gulls here, it's not often you see the same birds two days running. Again, it's not often there's more than half a dozen at a time.

Lostock School — common gull records per month

Common gulls are our Winter gulls and nearly always adult birds. The field's a bit small for common gulls so seeing half a dozen of them here is an event.

Lostock School — yellow-legged gull records per month

Yellow-legged gulls are passing vagrants, always single birds, never staying more than an hour or so and only once an adult bird. The earliest record is from 2014, which probably reflects my increasing confidence in identifying them.

It's nice to see the numbers confirm my impressions. Perhaps if I wish hard enough I'll get a Med gull drop by sometime.