Saturday January 7

Another cloudy day with hardly a breath of wind.

The nearest I came to birding was my visit to the paper-shop, remembering to take my camera this time. I spent several minutes observing the birds taking cotoneaster berries close to the shop, but was eventually forced to conclude that the best of the berry-eaters were several Redwings.

Redwing

However, the good thing about the first ten days of the year is that you can add year-ticks accidentally. So this morning I noticed a Jay as I drove to Morrisons, and later clocked a Mallard from the kitchen window as it flew past. Easy peasy.

Less satisfactory were my attempts to photograph various tits and a Goldcrest in the back garden. It didn't help that for much of the time I was cooking the dinner for Lyn and my parents. The results were all disappointingly fuzzy.