Local patch

Barton Clough 

The day started with the first blackcap of the year, finally, a neat female with a bright caramel cap, and the discovery that I'd left the camera switched on in the bag and the battery was flat.

At one point there were eight cock sparrows on the fat feeder at the same time, an opportunity to see the full range of colour variations from the silver-cheeked three-year old through the iron-grey one- and two-year olds, some with paler grey cheeks and one with cheeks darker than its belly, to the dark, bright tawny three-year old I thought had gone the way of all things. The females are all roughly the same oak brown background colour, the variation being in the paleness of their underparts and the occasional white tail feathers.

The female coal tit that's been coming in on her own looks as if she's been in the wars a bit with feathers missing and dislodged from the back of her neck. It was she who reminded me to get more sunflower seeds in yesterday, unlike all the other titmice the coal tits aren't interested in the fat feeders as they can't take the food away to a safe place to eat or cache.

Over the road a couple of dozen black-headed gulls loafed on the field with a couple of common gulls and half a dozen herring gulls. This Winter I've really noticed that the lesser black-backs are relatively infrequent visitors here despite the usual evening passage of them overhead.

Although it was still dark and grey it was dry and slightly milder than it has been so I had an afternoon wander around the park and "waste" ground. Despite the twenty-odd starlings in the trees by the entrance the park was fairly quiet, just a handful of magpies on the field, a couple of goldfinches in the trees and the usual chaffinch pinking from the bowling green. I took the rough path through the trees at the end and was surprised that the first bird I saw was a treecreeper. There were more goldfinches, a couple of great tits rummaged in the bushes and a great spotted woodpecker drummed at the top of one of the older sycamores.

Lostock Park 

I'd noticed that contractors were in because one of them had driven a mini-digger through a flower bed that last week had been full of hellebores coming into flower. It turns out they'd laid an asphalt path from the park to the old railway line, making it a much safer footpath but I'll still miss the cobbles and nettles. My foreboding at this development was allayed slightly by the "Exciting Development Plot For Sale" notice still being up on St Modwen's Road.

More than just the singing robins and song thrush hinted at a change of seasons. The Winter blackbirds had moved on and the flocks of greenfinches and goldfinches had moved in, and very welcome crowds they were, too.

• Blackbird 1
• Blue tit 2 
• Carrion crow 2
• Chaffinch 1
• Feral pigeon 3
• Goldfinch 19
• Great spotted woodpecker 1
• Great tit 3
• Greenfinch 9
• Herring gull 4 overhead
• House sparrow 2
• Lesser black-back 3 overhead 
• Magpie 11
• Robin 4
• Song thrush 1
• Starling 24
• Treecreeper 1
• Woodpigeon 4

I had some shopping to do on my way home. The pied wagtail at the Trafford Centre bus station was being all Greta Garbo, turning away every time it saw the camera. For some reason every male pied wagtail I see at the Trafford Centre has a limp (they're not all the same bird).

Pied wagtail