FA cup 3rd round weekend always used to be exciting for me purely for the football, these days its the 1st birding weekend of the new year and gives me the opportunity of targeting certain species missed on New Years Day and search for birds found in the week.
As saturdays go, it was very quiet in terms of birders, and the weather was pretty settled although overcast, so that was somewhat surprising.
After a fruitless search for the Smew, I found a male stonechat by the path at the junction by the ridge & furrow, hillside & eastern reedbed.
From Old Astley Lane I got the ever reliable little owl, mistle thrush, jackdaw, rook & house sparrow. That put me on to 79 species. Down to the LEO roost and that was ticked off quickly along with willow tit and greenfinch.
I went back to the hide but as it was empty I walked back down to Lemonroyd and finally got the smew and a short eared owl was above the hillside.
At dusk a barn owl was seen for a matter of seconds, but I didnt get on to it, so my tally of 11 put me on 84 species in 2 days which I am really chuffed with!
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