Brrrrrrrrr

Well I've never seen snow like it, for the end of November/beginning of December anyway. By the middle of last week there was seven and a half inches of snow at home!

It makes difficult going for birding, never mind the poor birds that stick this freezing weather out. Take last Friday when I had a walk in my lunch break in Stafford. There was a Snipe flying over a row of houses and dropped into someone's garden, and two Lapwings landed on a grass verge next to the office, the only patch of ground not covered by snow.

Nevertheless, took a walk round Uttoxeter Quarry on Saturday morning. Despite everywhere frozen over there was a Dunlin stood on ice with 15 Lapwings, 1 Woodcock, 2 Snipe, 5 flyover Goosander, 2 Redpoll, plenty of Fieldfares and Redwings.

The deep end of Blithfield was surprisingly free of ice. There were quite a lot of gulls around but couldn't notice anything out of the ordinary. There was also an increasing mist and the cold was getting a bit unbearable, so skipped the roost until dusk.

As for Sunday, thought I'd have a look for some gulls. Unfortunately Stubber's Green was quiet, not many gulls around at all. So after about an hour I thought I would try a new spot for me, that being Kingswood Pool on the outskirts of Cannock. Lots of gulls here on arrival, that's better!


Thoroughly impressed with Kingswood actually, and the close views you can get of the gulls on the water. Or ice in today's case. Managed to pick out an adult Yellow-legged Gull, but by the time I got the camera ready:


But it did settle:


By the way, it really did have yellow legs, but got chatting to a couple of passers by. I'll never make a pro-photographer!