Dreich

Recovering after doing my bit of Christmas shopping I thought I'd have breakfast and take advantage of the milder, sunny weather to get some exercise. The tea was hardly brewed in the pot when the sky went dark and it started pouring down. I decided I wasn't going to have a lot of fun in that and, eventually, wrote off the morning. Then the afternoon, despite the promises of the weather forecasts.

The garden was busy. Spadgers tended to arrive in groups of half a dozen or less, a couple of times there were a dozen of them on the feeders at one time as groups coalesced. Team Silver looks to have fractured, a handful of one- and two-year old males sticking together as one group and two groups of males and females. I suspect they're still roosting together though. Another matter of concern is the loss of the male coal tit, the female's coming in on her own lately. 

A bag of mixed dried insects brought in the starlings, though not in any great numbers. I think that's down to the generally mild weather, there's only been a couple of days when the fields of the Mersey Valley would have been hard work.

• Blue tit 2
• Carrion crow 1
• Chaffinch 1
• Coal tit 1
• Dunnock 1
• Feral pigeon 2
• Great tit 2
• House sparrow 14
• Robin 1
• Starling 6
• Woodpigeon 1

A couple of times this week I've had five goldfinches come in for a couple of minutes. I hope they become fixtures. Time was I'd be routinely getting a couple of dozen in at a time.

Black-headed gull numbers on the school playing field are fitfully creeping up. Strangely, although there were plenty of lesser black-backs flying about when I nipped round to the shop none of them were settling at the school. 

• Black-headed gull 22
• Carrion crow 1
• Common gull 1
• Feral pigeon 3
• Herring gull 2
• Jackdaw 6
• Magpie 7
• Rook 6
• Starling 1

All the woodpigeons were on the chimney pots of houses on Barton Road, every fourth house having its pigeon. By two o'clock all the gulls had gone, as if by magic.

I'm going to have to have a dig into my old records to see if I'm right to be so worried about the numbers of gulls and spadgers. It might turn out to be a seasonal thing I haven't registered before like the November woodpigeon gap.