Lutley Wedge 30/01/11 2.00pm (4°c) Cold sunny, scattered cloud

Had a quick visit to Wassell Grove Pools this afternoon on the hunt for Redpoll. I found a flock of approx 30+ Siskins feeding in the Alders around the pools but the highlight was a single Lesser Redpoll, that i managed to 'dig out' in amongst the Siskins (sadly not the hoped for Mealy!) Redpoll are generally always much scarcer winter visitors here at Lutley than Siskin, and this is the first Redpoll of any flavour i've seen on the patch since the end of October 2010 when the last Autumn passage birds flew through, so today's was a good year-tick! 

Also seen today, 30 Redwings and 1 Fieldfare in the horse paddocks at the pools and 6 Bullfinch.  

Lesser Redpoll and male Siskin Wassell Grove Pools 30/1/11

20/01/11 10.05am Halesowen West Midlands

Found a single Waxwing in Halesowen town centre at 10.05am, in a Rowan on Andrew Rd/Wesson Gardens. 

Halesowen West Midlands 12/01/11 German Black-headed Gull!

Just off patch, on the 12th of January i spotted this German ringed 1st winter Black-headed Gull perched on a nearby TV aerial. With perseverance and digi-scoping i managed to read most of the numbers on the ring which was marked 550??62 HELGOLAND GERMANIA.

'German ringed' Black-headed Gull 12/1/11

Today i was excited to receive this e-mail from the German ringing scheme. The Black-headed Gull, number 5506662 had been ringed as a chick on 21/6/10 some 205 days earlier on the island of Baltrum which is one of the East Frisian Islands off the North coast of Germany, and 402 miles from Halesowen! This just goes to show how useful digi-scoping can be for reading bird rings, especially when combined with the world wide web. From sighting this Black-headed Gull to getting it's life history and movements in less than a week!

Baltrum, East Frisian Islands Germany

Lutley Wedge 04/01/11 08.20am (0°c) Cold, overcast light snow/sleet showers. Cold SW wind

A quick visit this morning. Sadly the cloud and sleet/snow showers at dawn spoiled any chance of seeing the partial eclipse of the sun! 
Top Footpath :-
39 Redwing 
6 Fieldfare
13 Siskin >N

Lutley Wedge 01/01/11 (6°c) 11.30am Grey overcast and misty, rain later.

The start of a new year on the patch. The highlight were 3 Curlew that flew over the Top Footpath heading West (SLC) and there were good numbers of Redwing around including a flock of around 140+ in the horse paddocks at Wassell Grove Pools.

3 Curlew >W

232 Redwing (38 >SW) (43 >W) (140+ Wassell Grove Pools)

87 Fieldfare

7 Pied Wagtail

25 Skylark (3 >S) (20 >N/NW)

2 Siskin

7 Herring Gull (1 >W) (2 >S) (4 >E)

15 L.B.B Gull

 Herring Gull 1/1/11