Sorry Malcolm, the wrong part of the vari-focals was looking at your text & mistook 7 for 2!
Looks like we're heading for our 50,000th hit today (since December 2006) - not bad for a recording area which couldn't even muster a YBW this autumn and now competing for attention with hundreds of other birding blogs, albeit mainly personal rather than aimed specifically at a recording area.
Heysham Obs
North harbour wall
A careful search at low tide in clear calm conditions produced:
Red-throated Diver - 3 in Cumbria i.e. miles away!
Eider - 7+5+1
Mute Swan - 6 imms 'in'
Meadow Pipit - 2 'in-off' (unexpected)
Med Gull - ad offshore
Finches - food all frozen - no birds
Harbour/wooden jetty
Purple Sandpiper - one under the wooden jetty on rocks
Shag - one on the stanchion next to the waterfall (SW corner harbour) & anothe by the end of the wooden jetty
Guillemot - one close inshore as the tide started rising
Middleton IE
SEVEN Raven flew over
Fieldfare - 18 (rare outside the autumn passage period here)
Redwing - 25
plus: Water Rail (1), Snipe (2), Moorhen (9), Coot (8), Mute Swan (2) in mainly frozen wetland area
Observers: Malcolm Downham, John Wood and Pete Marsh
Elsewhere
Hooded Crow 0940 hrs in field above conifers west of Quernmore Church cSD516604. Rough-legged Buzzard photographed early afternoon at Leighton Moss but only available briefly. No Waxwing reported locally for today, but c5 Carnforth Booths yesterday and c13 at Hornby/Butt Yeats on Thursday
