Anderton Boat Life, River Weaver, Marbury Park area

We had a couple of hours walking on a cold but dry day. Tufted Duck, Shovelors, Buzzard, Kestrel, Goldfinch, Teal, Mallard, Cormorant (overhead) plus the usuals. A very unusual Robin took a piece of biscuit from René's hand near the river.
New additions to the 2015 list were Bullfinch (carpark at Marbury), Rook and for the lifelist 2 beautiful Firecrest were darting around each other, tumbling through the air in the woodland. At first I thought they were Goldcrest (which I still didn't see in 2015 so would have been happy) but then saw a few flashes of definite red as they came to the bushes in front of me. Lovely!

Great Garden Birdwatch (RSPB annual event)

I watched my garden for an hour to count the greatest number of each species that visited to send in for the RSPB Annual Garden Birdwatch. A shame the 2x grey wagtails that visit occasionally recently did not show up, despite my freshly cleaned and filled feeders but I still had a fair few visitors.
Blackbird x3
Blue Tit x3
Great Tit
Long Tailed Tit
Wood pigeon
Collared Dove x2
Robin
Starling
and of course the resident Dunnock.

Risley Moss

It's been quite stormy the last few days with gale force gusts of wind. This weekend we just had a quick hour at Risley Moss but we were rewarded by wonderful views of two Great Spotted Woodpeckers, long tailed tits x6, blue+ great tits x 5+ each, chaffinch x 6, Robin x2, Blackbird x3 and a Jay.
Nipped into Asda Birchwood on the way home and saw a Pied (white) Wagtail new for the 2014 list too.

New Years Day over NYE anytime!

Usually I spend 1st Jan hungover and not doing much of significance. This time I took it easy last night and went birding with my family today. We set off for Marbury CP around 11ish, had a nice walk around. Rain was threatening but it stayed dry and it wasn't too cold (around 12 degrees C). We went into Northwich for lunch and then to Neumanns and Ashton's flashes, after 30 mins or so it started to rain and the wind got up but nothing too bad. All in all that has to be my best New Year's Day of my life so far, started my list with 35. I missed out on a Curlew and Buzzard seen by family members but with 35 in one day I can't be too upset about that :)

The highlight was probably seeing a Kingfisher flash of blue (not the one pictured as it was too rainy to take the camera today) flying across Budworth Mere and hearing some young kid say something like "I will remember this as a special day" to his mum. Me too!