85 for Nov

Steve added another one to November, Chiffchaff with the tit flock, a few days back. I did check for Little Owl twice over the weekend, but had no luck, I expect 1 or more is there.

Sunday I did a bit of a wildfowl count, Wigeon 200 BSL, 40 Sandford, 70 Lavell's, so nice to see us hit 310+ considering it is sol mild. I didn't count Gadwall, but guestimate would be 150-200. Nearly everything was on Lavell's, 60 Shoveler, 90 Teal and the female Pintail still around.

3-4 Bullfinch near John's bench were nice, 2-3 Goldcrest leave me hoping to see Fircerest still, the main islands reed bad and at Teal look rather trodden, so I do think it is likely a Bittern is around, but the weather is so windy there seems little point in looking.

Where the hell are all the Snipe, we had 20 in Sept-Oct, but just 1 or 2 about. 1-2 Siskin pinging about here and there, the odd group of Fieldfare and Redwing.

85 was what it finished on, so a new 2nd place, 5 off the 2011 high of 90.

It is an odd year, 134 so far, last year was similar until the early autumn, but then steadily added new birds for the yer, this year hasn't and leaves us currently 2 more than 2009's 132, 1 less than 2008's 135. 135 was also the total for 2004 & 2005. But since 2010, we have seen successive years of high counts, perhaps down to good coverage and Lea Farm G.P. Here are the totals;

2010 - 138, 2011 - 139, 2012 - 142 (the record), 2013 - 138, 2014 - 140.

So unless we have a remarkable December, 2015 will stand out as a 1 in 6 duff year, which seems inevitable because there has never been 5 species added to the year list in any December. 3 yes, but that was last year. If we want to be really optimistic then if got super cold and we got super lucky, then the following have occurred in December's gone by;

Black-necked Grebe
Red-necked Grebe
Bewick's Swan
Pink-footed Goose
White-fronted Goose

Brent Goose

Scaup
Smew

Merlin

Curlew

Lesser Spotted Woodpecker

Yellowhammer

I guess any one of these would be nice