Ring-necked Parakeet 1
Friday, January 10, 2025
Sunday, January 05, 2025
Lots of overnight snow !
Not much to report today though the feeder was busy with Blue, Great, Coal and Long-tailed Tits.
Most interesting was a superb looking Grey Wagtail in the crescent feeding off the snow and searching the walls and fences. Not much like their usual stream-side habitat but it must have been finding food as it was there most of the morning.
Saturday, January 04, 2025
Friday, December 27, 2024
Soil Hill, Ringstone Edge & Cromwell Bottom
Had an enjoyable day out birding around Halifax with Harry Coghill. We started at Soil Hill (of course) where we flushed two Jack Snipe, had a flyover Golden Plover, a heard-only Redpoll and two Raven blogging in glorious conditions above the fog.
Whilst there a message came through from DF that there were two drake Pintail on Ringstone, which would have been a Calderdale tick for us both. So we finished off our loop around the Hill before heading over. Upon arriving at Ringstone we quickly found the Pintails in the middle of the reservoir, with two drakes and two females sadly never coming close. In addition, a pair of Wigeon was close to the willows on the north bank.
Thursday, December 26, 2024
Shibden Park
Single Mute Swan still here. The knob at the base of the bill is a little more swollen than in the photo of 5 November - suggesting that the bird is a male?
Wednesday, December 25, 2024
Tuesday, December 17, 2024
Friday, December 13, 2024
Whiteholme
1 of 3 Ravens. I still sometimes have difficulty separating Raven from Carrion Crow when a flying or perched bird is seen against the sky, from the side, and there is nothing nearby for size comparison. There is not a vast size difference between a large Crow bill and a small Raven bill. The new photographic 'ID Handbook of European Birds' mentions a useful Raven feature that can be seen well in the lower photo of this bird (which has a small bill for a Raven): "the distal part of the upper mandible is strongly curved".