2022 dawned bright and sunny as the recent run of dreary weather was consigned to memory. While the middle part of the day saw the arrival of some rain it did not hang around long enough to spoil the day. My birding year began at Blatherwycke Lake where my persistence finally payed off as the first of the January big bills duly showed up.
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| Distant Mandarins and Egyptian Geese. |
Feral wildfowl kicked things off with about forty five Mandarin Ducks being found and they were joined by four Egyptian Geese. Numbers of the other ducks seemed low and only four species were noted with Wigeon being the commonest. There were good numbers of Lapwings on site and a couple of Little Egrets but overall the lake seemed rather quiet. I took my usual detour to have a check of the churchyard in case there were any Hawfinches about, this is an occasional site for them but I always look just in case. Three Greenfinches caused a brief flutter until I'd checked them through the bins and at first it looked as if my search would prove fruitless. A ticking call piqued my curiosity and had me scanning the surrounding trees. To my delight I found a Hawfinch which hung around long enough for me to record the event. After what seemed like an all too short a stay the bird flew off with another for company. They didn't appear to go too far but I couldn't relocate them. After a brief period I set off in the direction of Deene with a bit of a grin fixed on to my face.
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| Two views of Hawfinch |
Deene was fairly quiet too though there seemed to be a better variety of duck here, I added Shelduck, Shoveller, Pochard and Teal to my list. Another pair of Egyptian Geese were seen while there was a large flock of Greylag Geese present, no amount of searching could produce anything decent among them however. Leaving Deene behind I made my way home without adding much else to the day's tally but it didn't really matter - the memory of that cracking Hawfinch will keep me going for a while!
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| Stock Dove |
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