Soil Hill and Luddenden Dean

Andy H and myself took advantage of the good weather (?) and went up Soil Hill to see if the Snow Bunts were still around. They were, 4 of them, around the back of the mounds poking around in the rubble and puddles and snow. The visibility was bad but we had good views and they approached quite close to us as we crouched and tried to get some photos. Drizzle was blowing onto the cameras so the quality of the shots we got wasn't great - here's the best of mine.

We walked around the hill seeing if we could put up a Snipe or Jack Snipe but no go. There were 2 Skylarks and 3 Lapwings though.

On to Luddenden in the hope of seeing the Northern Long-tailed Tits that I had missed on two previous visits....3rd time lucky perhaps?

We parked at Jerusalem Farm and walked by the stream towards the head of the Dean then onto the track. As we reached the track we saw a flock of LTT's, about 15-20 strong. Those we were able to get onto were not Northerners though. There were numerous Blue, Great and Coal Tits down the track. We wandered aimlessly through the clouds hoping to catch a view of the birds and at about 14:00 Andy spotted two of them on the telephone wires behind the house where the feeders are where photos have been taken previously.

They really stand out like sore thumbs compared to the standard LTT's and once you see them they are unmistakable. They flew off in the direction of the feeders and we hoped to see them on the way out by splitting up and covering both ends of the track but we missed their exit and never saw them again unfortunately.

Other birds seen:
Treecreeper - at least 3
Nuthatch - 2
Great Spotted Woodpecker - 2 maybe 3
Bullfinch - 4 (3 females)
Kestrel
Goldcrest - 2
Grey Heron - 2 (one perched in a fir tree)