Dreich

I decided I needed a day without getting my feet wet and, to be honest, the glamour of smelling like a wet sheep when I get home is beginning to pall. I thought I'd get myself an old man's explorer ticket and have a go at adding the Slavonian grebe at Workington Harbour to the year list but that idea fell at the first hurdle when the train into Manchester was cancelled. I could have got a later train, or got the bus into Manchester and walked down to Oxford Road, but I wanted more than an hour and a half's daylight to play in at the other end. A couple of stand-by plans were similarly scotched. We seem to be getting a lot of cancellations on this line lately and I can't claim delay repay compensation because my local travel card allows use of buses and Northern reckons that means they can jig me about to their heart's content.

My loss was the spadgers' gain, I did a morning shop to replenish all the sunflower feeders and suet feeders and put a suet block hanging in the dog rose by the fence. The great tits, blue tits and coal tit got in first, the sparrows were otherwise engaged down the road.

The November absence of woodpigeons I noticed last Winter has been repeated. The crowds I see first thing in the morning on the school field have moved on by playtime, I think they're birds on migration stopping by to top up for the day before getting on their way. There are reports from the regular flyways at Woolston Eyes and Winter Hill of thousands of woodpigeons passing by each day, Scandinavian birds heading for the cork woods of Iberia and a Winter stuffing themselves full of acorns. There's no good reason I can think of why our local birds haven't headed off that way already. There are still odd birds here and there and most of our woodlands have dozens of them feeding on the acorns but I think we'll have to wait for Winter's bite before we see the big numbers back round these parts.