First quarter review

Whooper swans, Martin Mere 

It was a slow start to 2025. The New Year brought floods and a cold snap which made birdwatching both hazardous and uninviting. The record flooding on the Mersey Valley put the block on most of the local sites and a peculiarity of the weather lead to my having to go North to avoid treacherously icy walking conditions.

Oystercatchers, Meols

Things settled down mid-January to the milder eternal twilights that have become our Winter norm and the birdwatching settled into a routine. The routine being that I'd go out, see lots of birds and dip on whatever it was I'd gone out to see, with a few notable exceptions. But then I've added the shore lark at Oglet to my life list and the year list so far includes Kumlein's gull, black redstart, ferruginous duck, red-necked grebe, surf scoter, hooded crow, spoonbill, spotted redshank, ring-necked duck, green-winged teal, red-crested pochard, great northern diver… okay, perhaps I'm not doing so bad after all. 

It was a Winter thin on fieldfares, geese and warblers for some reason, I can't spot an obvious reason why. Of course, if birdwatching was predictable there'd be no fun in the doing of it.

Bullfinches, Leighton Moss 

Spring came early to late February, which again is becoming the norm, and the chiffchaffs started singing ridiculously early in March. In fact, I'd been unlucky not to see a February sand martin, there were individuals flying by everywhere except where I'd happen to be on a given day, a condition that prevailed throughout March, too.

Black-headed gulls and herring gull, Pennington Flash 

Totals so far for the year by recording areas:

• Greater Manchester 89
• Cheshire and Wirral 88
• Cumbria 48
• Denbighshire 32
• Derbyshire 41
• Flintshire 29
• Lancashire and North Merseyside 118
• Yorkshire 56

The year list is currently a nice round 150.

I've managed to visit a few new places and there are a lot of places I didn't get round to visiting and it's keeping me out of mischief. So that's all right then.

Pink-footed geese, Crossens Marsh