It's still January

 Came across this little poem which I thought summed up where we are this month:

       Thirty days hath September,

        April, June and November,

        Unless a leap year is its fate

        February has twenty-eight

        All the rest have three days more, 

        Excepting January

        Which has six thousand one hundred and eighty - four.

Anyway the evenings are stretching out and we have only had one cold spell here in balmy Bangor. Cold spells  are designated as such if my pond freezes over. This happened on four mornings last week. The local Bangor patch has added a kingfisher at the Long Hole and a greenfinch turned up on the feeder. The coastal path added ringed plover, common gull and pied wagtail. Here's a selection of garden visitors including one of the 5 herring gulls which fly round waiting for out of date mince pies. Other birds will take the crust and the crumbs when they are broken up but the gulls are quickly in and swallow them whole. It's nice to see the song thrush in the garden, I don't get too many and it is a regular visitor as are the house sparrows. 

Long Hole Kingfisher

Mrs Blackcap

Collared dove

Coal and blue tit

Mr & Mrs house sparrow

Mr Blackcap

Song thrush

Herring gull

Blackcap

WOW continues to rack up species as you would expect in a new year. I am now up to 55 for the RSPB patch  having added 15 species including linnet, wigeon and stonechat. The full list is below. 

I promised a report on the ringed black-tailed godwit which was ringed as an adult female in April 2021. It has been resighted 10 times since then, six times at WOW,  once at Whitehouse Lagoon on the north side of Belfast Lough, once on Kinnegar beach and twice at Island hill which is at the northern end of Strangford Lough. It has not been seen in Iceland where it should go to breed. Some of the other birds ringed in the same catch have popped up in North Wales and Norfolk but this individual has not been re-sighted outside Northern Ireland.  

The buzzard is a regular visitor and hunts a range of prey but last week it perched up with something different. It took us a long time to work out what it was but it turned out to be a single glove which had been left out by one of the volunteers who do work on the reserve. The picture is awful, but be assured it is one of our gloves. 

Moorhen

Mallard pair

Ringed godwit - history above.

Teal

Red-breasted merganser

Buzzard and glove.

Little grebe

2024:

85: Ringed plover

86: Kingfisher

87: Purple sandpiper

WOW:

41: Long-tailed tit

42:Dunnock

43: Gadwall

44: Buzzard

46: Pied wagtail

46:Dunlin

47: Song thrush

48: Stonechat

49: Wigeon

50: Rook

51: ringed plover

52: Linnet

53: Robin

54: Meadow pipit

55: Great black-backed gull

NDCP:

36: Pied wagtail

37: Ringed plover

38: Kingfisher

39: Common gull

40: Greenfinch