MEALY REDPOLL

A pleasant mornings stroll around the flashes produced a few more padders for the year list.. Sparrowhawk, Cormorant, Stock Dove, Greylag Goose were expected. Birds were out in force in the bright sunshine with big numbers of Lapwing, Curlew and gulls on Ashton's Flash.

Ashton's Flash looking very appealing in the glorious winter sunlight.

I did have a 'pipit' flyover calling...a single tweeet! call t'other day so heads up for Water Pipit maybe...who knows? the truth is out there.

The view from Bund Hide was rather nice as well, almost Spring like, pity the Green-winged Teal has decided to go else where.

From the Old Hide as it's known (not Hide.1...how unoriginal is that!) the view still needs a bit of trimming me thinks, especially on the right-hand side (remember the shouts of derision when the Stilt Sandpiper was here last year).

Anyway back to the main topic of this post and having added four new year ticks to the list I was feeling rather satisfied.

I decided to cut the corner of Ashton's and nipped over the fence to get Common Snipe on the day list, which stood at a very respectable 46. In fact the best day on the patch so far species wise.

A small flock of Redpolls were feeding with a mixed bunch of Bullfinch and Long-tailed Tits (a very odd combination} in the alders that fringe the flash.

I moved round to get the sun behind me and got to within 4m of the feeding flock of Redpolls.

Boom!! wow one very white/grey toned male bird flashed a whitish rump at me...this looks promising I thought! On further inspection the bird showed a nice clean white wing bar (secondary bar I think they call it), all white underparts with black finally streaked flanks, a grey/brownish mantle with white braces, pale grey ear coverts with a small dark eye with no eye-ring. The overall tone of the bird was a white/grey as opposed to the brown/grey off the other 'Lesser' Redpolls. I didn't have my camera with me but tried in vain to get a phone photo through my bins but the flock spooked before I could connect.

Having seen several Mealy Redpolls through a scope a few weeks earlier I was quite confident to call this a Mealy Redpoll as well..in fact a pretty good one at that. Hopefully I can get down there again and get some photos just to prove positive. A good year tick for the list and the second Mealy I've found on Ashton's flash. The first one (for me to find anyway) way back in 2008. There was also one in 2006.

Seems there has been a mini influx of various Redpoll species into Cheshire with a probable Arctic in a secret garden somewhere near Chester and Mr Wizzal having a possible Coue's in his back garden.

All good stuff!

#PWC 66 species  70 points (only 1 point for Mealy doh!)  

TTFN