Yesterday I was hoping to clean up some more yearticks in the north of the Fylde, especially the Snow Bunting at Cockersands. I arrived at 10am with the tide quite far out, which meant that most of the birds were along way out and difficult to view. I walked from the car park up to plover scar in the hope that the bunting would be near the sea wall, however it was not to be and there was no sign of any small birds at all. A pair of Eider were feeding offshore as were a large flock of Wigeon and I counted 24 Pintail.
Since I was close to Ellel Grange I thought that a stop off here might produce Kingfisher and Jay for the year as I saw 3 of each on my last visit on the canal, however once again neither of them were showing. Luckily the woods around the canal were full of birds, with large flocks of Redwing and Fieldfare being hurried off by at least 3 Mistle Thrushes that were determined to protect their local patches. An area of flooded woodland by the side of the canal looked good for Woodcock (year tick) and sure enough almost immediately I noticed one scuttling away through the undergrowth, my first one in almost 2 years. A single Raven flew north as did 2 Buzzards.
The plan after this was to head down to Preston via a quick stop off at Myerscough Quarry to get Goosander for the year, however this "quick stop" turned into a thorough search of the area and it meant that I didn't get time to get down to Cottam Brickworks. The quarry lake was alive with gulls, hundreds of Black Headed Gulls and Common Gulls, 14 Goosander (1 off the site record I believe), 6 Goldeneye (2 males which were displaying) and over 250 Wigeon. A strange Aytha hybrid was present on the lake and after getting home I found out that it was a Tufted Duck x Pochard hybrid. The Goosander and Woodcock take me up to 119 for the year out of 146 species seen in the fylde so far in 2011.
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