The curse of Calderdale???

In recent days, recording areas directly neighbouring ours have turned up some great birds, despite it being January. Granted, both of their areas are bigger and you could argue more diverse in habitat, but in the past week alone...
Bradford - glaucous gull, scaup, red crested pochard, little egret, black-necked grebe, white-fronted goose
East Lancs - slavonian grebe, great grey shrike, caspian gull, glaucous gull, scaup, red-breasted merganser, pintail.

In the same period, we appear to have had relatively little. These are nearly all birds that have in the mists of time appeared in Calderdale on more than one occassion, so what is happening? Are they making a huge detour to go round us these days? Or are they there and we're just not picking them up?

Alright, it's not exactly the Carmargue round here, but I think there is a danger that we are missing birds that are out there, and therefore people think that Calderdale isn't worth birding in and go out of area, so we miss birds that are out there..........etc in circles.