The end of 2012

Well, christmas festivities are done and dusted once again.  The following few days mainly involved a piece of the dreaded DIY.  No getting away from this one, as the bannister fell off the staircase wall, suppose I'll have to stop sliding down it from now on.

The fix involved drilling new holes into the wall and new screws to attach the bannister back on, whilst being ingeniously propped up by lots of books on the stairs!  Wow it worked, usually my DIY adventures end up like this.



But as there was a bit of daylight left on Friday afternoon, there was time for a quick look round Brookleys Lake.  Sadly, a small oil spill has appeared.  It would be easy for any flood water to pick up a patch of oil and for it to make it's way into the lake, but it looked like more than a small patch.  Lets hope it doesn't do too much damage, particularly to any fish in there.  As can be seen a boom has been put up at the lake's mouth where water flows in.

Perhaps it's just as well there wasn't very many duck around at all, with 12 Mandarin, 4 Goosander and a drake Gadwall of note.

Saturday involved an afternoon at Blithfield.  A few Goldeneye dotted all around the reservoir, an absolute stack of Teal in Tad Bay, could easily have been 600, no green-winger though.  The gull roost in Tad held up to seven different Yellow-legged Gulls.

And as for today, it's just been Uttoxeter Quarry.  Which contained 179 Wigeon, 10 each of Goosander and Pochard, 1 Goldeneye.  Unfortunately for 2013 listing purposes, no sign of the Pink-footed Geese in the Greylag flock and no sign of the Common Sandpiper for a few weeks now, presumed drowned!  No I definitely hope not.

And that's it for 2012, a memorable year for many different reasons.  But can 2013 have less rain please?