PATCH DIARY
Weedon's World
After a decent end to 2023, Mike embarked on the marathon of the 2024 year list, in the usual way...
Last year ended with a bit of a mid-December flourish, with the addition of my second ever Peterborough-area American Wigeon, a dozen or so Mealy Redpolls and some much-craved Waxwings. The latter (I saw four) were in the car park of the offices which contain Bird Watching magazine, feeding on the scattered Rowans, there. These took my 2023 local year list up to a ‘respectable’ 187.
It is 2 January 2024 as I write, and I’m still recovering from yesterday’s New Year Big Day. This year, for the challenge to see and hear as many species as possible on Day One, I was joined by my friend Hugh Wright and my son Eddie. Hugh has supreme ears and eyes, and Ed brought the youthful enthusiasm and energy of someone liberated from London’s concrete jungle, after years of studying there. Returning to his home patch, he was able to remind us how lucky we are to live in such a bird-rich area.
Owing to my bad knees and a shortage of daylight, we used the hybrid method of combining driving with bike riding. Our tight itinerary was geared towards ticking ‘elites’, special birds which may have survived the New Year firework madness. The pre-dawn start was at a place called Helpston Pilot (south of Helpston), with a positive chorus of Tawny Owl hooting, plus a crazy number of Woodcocks (a dozen or more flying about after a night’s feeding). We left before sunrise to the sound of a Raven’s ‘cronk’: 30 species. Next stop was our first cycle ride, around the largely coniferous forest of Southey Wood. There were no hoped-for Crossbills, but we did get most of the key woodland birds, including Treecreeper, Goldcrest and Jay, and left on 45 birds. By the time we’d failed to find Jack Snipe near the village of Etton, we had added Grey Partridge, Grey Wagtail and Golden Plover; after Marsh Harrier, Cetti’s Warbler and Snipe, we were on 60 birds, and it was 9.30am.
Half an hour later, we sent Eddie on a mission to walk quickly along a sinuous, mud-lined ditch in search of Green Sandpipers. He returned, saying he’d seen a white-bellied, grey bird with a crest, flying round the bend of the ditch. Taking this for a Lapwing, we left, and a mile down the road, having looked up Green Sandpiper on his phone, Ed declared that that was what he’d seen (i.e. no crest)! We returned to the site, and all three of us walked the ditch to find Ed’s bobbing Green Sandpiper: 70.
At Deeping Lakes, we greeted several old birding friends who told us of a Glossy Ibis ‘showing well’, and how Long-eared Owls were easy from the hide by The Lake. Despite cycling as fast as we could along the grassy bank of the River Welland, the
