Harlequin Duck

Another successful long-distance twitch, this time for a drake Harlequin Duck. Read about it on the Outside the Patch page.

Harlequin Duck - not my photo!

1000 page views

I've had my first thousand page views. Thanks everyone!
Always happy to hear what you think about the blog.

Andy

Splashing around the lakes

Here are a selection of photos from my afternoon walk around Fen Drayton Lakes:

Jet enjoyed splashing in the floodwater on Holywell Ferry Road

Drake Goldeneye, Ferry Lagoon

Goosanders & other wildfowl, Ferry Mere

Swavesey church

Wigeon, Ferry Lagoon

Ferry Pond

Balloon over Holywell

Goldeneyes, Ferry Lagoon

Magpie, Holywell Lake

One way to get through the floods

Another way!

Pine Grosbeak

Here are a couple of photos taken by one of my travelling companions, Jim Lawrence, from when we twitched the Pine Grosbeak.

Foot It - the results

For those of you that are interested, I came 38th out of 109 in the Foot It challenge. Scoring was based on the percentage of species seen against your original target.
Of those people that entered their lists onto the BUBO listing website, I came 5th out of 41. This is based on actual number of species seen.

An amazing trip to Shetland

A full report on my incredible day-trip to the Shetland Islands, to twitch a Pine Grosbeak, in on the 'Outside the Patch' page. Here's a taster..........

1st winter Pine Grosbeak at Housetter, Mainland Shetland

Grafham Water

A short report from our day out at Grafham is on the 'Out of the Patch' page.

Hawfinch

There are a few photographs of the female Hawfinch at Wimpole Hall on the 'Outside the Patch' page.

Lesser Redpolls

The first ever sighting of Lesser Redpoll in my garden was on 29/12/12, when two birds came in with some sparrows, but didn't hang around.
This morning, presumably the same birds returned & this time they stayed to feast on my nyjer seed.

A cropped image of the paler bird.

Enjoying the nyjer seed.

Here's a quick video that I shot through the back door.