MARCH

Should this website have more swearing? The results are in:

So the people have voted, though I'm not entirely sure how to interpret the results. Clearly most of you think that I'm a twat and that I should fuck off, feelings that are often echoed in my real life as well as my online life. But out of the 149 votes in total only 20 of you thought that there was already enough swearing and couldn't give a shit, whereas overwhelming support for Yes, Fuck off and McKinney is a twat all suggest that most of you believe there should indeed be more swearing on my increasingly pathetic website. Well I hate democracy and if it was up to me then I'd rule this land with the iron fist of Stalin, but, tragically, I don't rule this land and so democracy seems to have won through. You want more swearing? Well you've fucking got it, you fucking cunt bastards! Grab your dicks/tits and get ready for the most shit moronically offensive puerile shower of piss you'll ever read. Get fucked!

27th-30th March, Scotland

- Let's go to Lewis to see the Snowy Owls.
- But what about work and money and stuff?
- Fuck it. We're rebels. We don't follow petty rules and regulations. We're the MTV generation. We didn't grow up listening to New Kids on the Block, East 17 and Right Said Fred only to ignore the lessons of life that they had to preach. Did the words to Milli Vanilli's 'Girl you know it's true' mean absolutely nothing to you? Authority and bureaucracy has no place in my life - hey Mr Politician, we don't hear your jive talk, fool!

Fuck all that. And do you know why (we should fuck all that)? Because there were no Snowy Owls, that's why. Not one. They were both there showing well on Tuesday but when we arrived on Wednesday both of the fuckers had fucked off for good. Bastards. At least there would be a White-billed Diver or two as compensation - well, you'd think so wouldn't you? And were there any White-billed Divers? No. Not one single twat White-billed Diver. So, in essence, it was basically a complete fucking shit hole waste of time. Bollocks. And you want some more swearing? Do you? Well I also lost my fucking bastard fucking mobile twat phone SIM card as well and now have to pay the cunts at Orange for the privilege of a fucking new one, even though I've got a piece of shit fucking contract with the wankers. How's that for swearing, you fuckers?

Okay, enough of the mindless swearing. It's neither big nor clever. Back to the intelligent, thought provoking, often witty and always enlightening style that you're used to.

Loch Venachar

Our first stop on the way to not see the Snowy Owls (and White-billed Divers) was Loch Venachar to not see the Barrow's Goldeneye. I didn't care because I saw a proper wild one in Aberdeen in 2005; Miss Cole has never seen one but she still didn't give a shit - mindless anarchy! Nice place though.

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Aviemore

As our boat wasn't until the next evening we stayed the night in Aviemore consuming the following junk food on the way:

The full inventory is two empty packets of McCoy's salt and vinegar crisps (or potato chips as everyone else in the world calls them), six empty Breakaway wrappers, six empty Fox's Classic wrappers and two empty cartons of battered sausage and chips. We then washed this down in the pub with a piss poor pint of expensive fizzy continental lager and a healthy dose of Scottish journalistic cynicism:

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Abernethy Forest

After such a terrible diet, the next morning I was literally pulling strips of dead flesh off the inside of my mouth as we walked into an undisclosed location somewhere near to an undisclosed town just before sunrise.

Abernethy Forest is filled with invisible Capercaillies, or 'the horse of the woods' as its ye olde Gaelic translation supposedly means (that's a pretty strange looking horse if you ask me), and we were treated to our usual fantastic 0.5 second view of a female smashing through the branches and vanishing into the forest. No matter how quietly you walk, no matter how much cunning field craft and stealth you deploy, you can never get the better of a Caper - they will always see you coming way, way, way before you see them. I'd love to be attacked by a rogue male, though I'd probably regret having wished it if it did actually happen to me. If anyone ever hears of an insane rogue, like Mad George in the 80s-90s, please let me know. Here's Attenborough getting battered by one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xSj5XcByuA

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Loch Glascarnoch

The drive from Aviemore to Ullapool is the longest in the world - you see a sign saying 36 miles and then half an hour later it says 35 miles. Thankfully potential boredom is alleviated by the scenery - they should have filmed Lord of the Rings here, as well as persuading Liv Tyler to get them out for the lads.

***

Undisclosed Site

		A gorgeous full summer adult Black-throated Diver on an undisclosed loch somewhere in an undisclosed area of an undisclosed part of a country north of England. I hadn't seen a full summer bird like this for years and forgot just how good they look. I was also happy to see that the bill was quite short and slender thus confirming what I though all along about the recent Pacific Divers - namely that the bills of the Pacific Divers were not so obviously different as seemed to be the consensus of opinion. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the Pacific Divers weren't Pacific Divers, just that I didn't agree when everyone was saying how radically different they were compared to Black-throated Divers. But then what do I know?

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Ullapool

When I was at university in Manchester we had a lecturer who lived in Ullapool and used to commute back and forth every week - he was known as Dr Stupidtwat. I never understood why anyone would want to put themselves through an eighteen hour round trip every week, I suppose the scenery on the way is pretty spectacular, but surely that's going to wear very thin after decades of repetition? Maybe not.

The boat across to Lewis. Note gathering storm clouds and howling gale - clearly a bad omen of things to come.

***

I can't be bothered to go through the pain, heartache and suicidal abject misery that we experienced during our repeated trips to Borve to not see the Snowy Owls. Suffice to say that we spent a serious amount of time gazing into an empty field where they had been sat showing well for the previous few weeks right up until the day before we got there. So here's what else we did on the Isle of Lewis.

Loch Barvas

For years I've wondered just how much truth there is in those incredible good luck stories when people find good birds. Things like, "On the evening of 26th April I was making myself a brew and dropped the sugar bowl on the floor. My wife came into the kitchen to berate my clumsiness but slipped and fell on the spilt sugar. After she picked herself up off the floor I noticed that the sugar had been arranged into piles to perfectly spell out 'Tomorrow morning you will find an Orphean Warbler.' The next morning I went to my local patch of Dampclit-on-Trent gravel pits and the first bird I saw by the car park was indeed a fantastic male Orphean Warbler. Throughout its seven week stay the bird was enjoyed by upwards of 10,000 enthralled birdwatchers." Shit like that never happens to me. But today I did have a tiny bit of luck when I saw a group of Common Gulls from the car and said these exact words: "I bet there's a Ring-billed Gull in them." And flip me if the first bird I saw through my bins wasn't a 2nd year Ring-billed Gull (ie it was a Ring-billed Gull):

Okay, so it's not exactly rare nowadays, but when you live where I do and spend time watching the local shit holes that I do, you milk everything you can out of finding something fractionally more interesting than a Gadwall:

Some really close Ringed Plovers gave Miss Cole a chance to do some digiblasting:

Then a quick scan of the big gulls at the back produced this:

Yep, a fat horrible Glaucous Gull:

Glaucous Gulls are great but sadly seem to becoming increasingly scarce in Britain nowadays. Back in the day they used to be far more common than Iceland Gulls but now the numbers are totally opposite. Must be global warming, well, that or gonorrhoea.

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Stornoway Harbour

In Stornoway harbour, by the lifeboat station, we were treated to a 1st winter Herring Gull which is probably an American Herring Gull. Have a look at the good pictures here, here and here to make your own minds up. On balance I'd say this bird probably is one (an American one that is), but based on the good old fashioned twitching rule of can't ID it: can't tick it then, seeing as I probably wouldn't have identified it myself, I can't tick it. Looking at photos on Surfbirds in advance and then locating it is one thing, but I'm 99% certain that I would have overlooked this bird as an American Herring Gull without prior knowledge of its presence, and thus bow down to those greater than myself, of which there are many. I'd tick a textbook, big, horrible, shitty-brown thing with disgusting shit-brown greater coverts as I reckon I could find one of them for myself, but I have a feeling that me trying to do vagrant birds at the paler end of the spectrum may be akin to pissing in the wind. Of course, rules are there to be broken, so I might just tick it at a later date when I'm feeling less pompous.

1st winter Iceland Gull. Or is it a 2nd winter? I don't know. Iceland Gulls don't even breed in Iceland yet it's still a good name - Iceland Gull just seems appropriate. It's probably appropriate because they're white and Iceland has snow and ice and stuff, and they harpoon whales and club baby seals to death... oh no, I forgot, that's the Canadians. Canadians / Icelandics / Greeks, they're all the same to me. Of course, it's easy for us British to criticise other countries for their poor records of cruelty towards God's creatures because over here we don't kill anything for fun, except innocent people in Iraq (cutting edge politics - kapow!).

I can never remember why birds stand on one leg. A teacher at school once told me that they get a kick out of sticking their foot up their arse, but he may have been fibbing. I seem to remember that he also told an Irish girl called Dara that her Gaelic name is translated into English as 'twat', and that he once warned me that if I told my parents about him hitting me then he would make sure that I was expelled and sent to borstal.

I can never remember why birds sit down on no legs. A teacher at school once told me...

A Hooded Crow, or is it just a Carrion Crow wearing a gentleman's smoking jacket? I made up a joke whilst watching it:

- What do you call a corvid that is not allowed to wear certain teenage clothes in Essex shopping centres?
- A Hoody Crow

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Loch Stiapavat

Stiapavat - home of Hollywood superstar Kevin Costner (the big house on the brow of the hill). It used to be the island abattoir before Costner bought it and converted it into a luxury mansion with its own private baseball pitch and golf driving range. Costner loves nothing more than taking a stroll on the nearby beaches, sipping mojito cocktails from his first floor balcony and enjoy the spectacular sunsets. On the far right of the picture you can see the home of Magnum PI star Tom Selleck, and the big white house in the middle used to be owned by Naked Gun star Leslie Nielsen, but Nielsen had to sell up and move to Lytham St.Annes after a knee operation meant he could no longer climb the spiral staircase to his helter-skelter slide. It was then bought by the late Rod Hull who unfortunately fell off the roof trying to adjust the TV aerial. The house is now rumoured to be owned by Batman's nemesis The Penguin. There was an adult Kumlien's Gull here:

Kumlien's Gull. KUMLIEN'S GULL. kumlien's gull. Kumlien's Gull. It doesn't matter how you say it you still can't tick it. Is it an Iceland Gull? Is it a Thayer's Gull? Is it a bit of both? Who knows? Certainly not me.

Kumlien's Gulls are real birders' birds, which usually means they're a bit shit. They're kind of along similar lines as Caspian Reed Warbler, Caspian Stonechat, Caspian Gull and Caspian Tit, none of which really exist even though they do. Anyway, where is Caspia? Is it anywhere near to Dauria?

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Port Ness

Nice place is Port Ness. Fuck all birds, but still a nice place. A small flock of Twite and a few Rock Pipits were messing about on the grassy cliffs around nesting Fulmars:

One of my birding ambitions in life (as well as getting attacked by a Capercaillie) is to get thrown up on by a Fulmar. One of the first birding trips I went on was with North Staffs RSPB group to South Stack on Anglesey. As an enthralled child I'd read a few times how Fulmars vomit the most rancid bile over potential invaders that get too close, and I got kind of excited by the prospect of it happening to me. Unfortunately they were all nesting on really high cliffs and I didn't want to die in the process. But at just above head height, these Port Ness birds probably offered me the best chance so far of being vomited on, however, I pathetically bottled out at the last minute because I only had one set of clothes with me. Yes, I am lame.

Ringers are always getting vomited on by Fulmars, lucky bastards, but they can justify getting too close to nests because they're doing some good by ringing them, whereas I would just be recklessly disturbing them for the self-gratification of getting covered in Fulmar vomit. Birds Britannica describes Fulmar vomit as follows:

...warm, yellow, greasy, foul, fish-smelling vomit [that] has the consistency and colour of melted butter and occasionally it contains fine strips of a reddish substance which looks like cooked tomato peel.

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The Butt of Lewis

The Butt of fucking Lewis. The fucking Butt of fucking Lewis. Bastard place. The last time we were here was September 4th 2004 looking for a Purple Martin and not seeing it - we're really good at not seeing things on Lewis. I seem to remember that along with another 75 suicidal twitchers we missed it by just under an hour. Miss Cole was interviewed for Grampian TV which was amusing.

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Miscellaneous crap

The great thing about trying to suck off upside-down whales from a boat is that everyone just thinks that you're throwing up.

19th March, Audenshaw Reservoir

Pretty quiet. A 1st year drake Common Scoter on reservoir 2 and Great Northern Diver on reservoir 3 should be cause for great excitement in an inland county, only they've now been here for fucking ages and are starting to piss me off. The entrance by the Blue Pig pub has been blocked off due to construction of the new car park, so you have to jump the wall now - Breakin' the law, Breakin' the law!

Common Scoter. I think.

17th March, Fletcher Moss

Did you know that Fletcher Moss is where the RSPB was formed way back in the ye olden days of 1889? It's true. Emily Williamson, a reformed Victorian lesbian crack-head prostitute, was so pissed off with people shooting Great Crested Grebes purely for purposes of ostentatious vanity, that she formed the RSPB, or as it was known back then LABiA (Lesbians Against Bird Atrocities). Based at Fletcher Moss gardens, Emily's LABiA left a bitter taste in the mouths of many a male politician, but soon the campaign to stop killing Grebes and other birds gained momentum, eventually attracting some male supporters at which point people began to take it seriously - a sad indictment of gender inequality in ye olden Victorian times.

You can't help but admire Victorian women and 1889 was a great year for them. Because, despite being forced to wear eighteen layers of clothing in all weathers, not being allowed to vote and then being imprisoned if they dared to suggest that actually things might be a little bit unfair, they still managed to do some crazy shit. Take Nellie Bly who in 1889 circled the planet from New York back to New York by road, train and boat in just 72 days. And then compare her achievement to those of that cunt Richard Branson who, despite being worth £4 billion, couldn't even make it in a big stupid fucking red balloon in 700 failed attempts - what a twat!

So there you are, Fletcher Moss and the RSPB. The next time I go I'll take a photo of the blue plaque to prove I haven't made it all up.

And bird wise? 2 Green Woodpeckers (which is 1 more than 1), 2 Great Spotted Woodpeckers (the same number as that of the Green Woodpeckers - coincidence or magic?), 3 Chiffchaffs, flyover Meadow Pipit and a Goosander on the river.

16th March, Aspull Common

You know, what with the Desert Wheatear and the prospect of Spring migrants, for a split second I almost contemplated starting up this Manchester year list again. And then I went to Aspull Common to look for a Mealy Redpoll, and found only a bottle of piss. I asked Miss Cole if she'd drink it for £1,000,000, she said no. I said I'd drink it for a tenner. She then pulled a tenner out of her pocket and I had to drink it. Thankfully it was only Irn Bru.

A bottle of piss

A bottle of piss at Aspull Common was a neat reminder as to why I've sacked off this Manchester year list. Good luck to those far braver than myself!

15th March

Had to sack the illegal immigrant workers today. I've lost my fortune through excessive gambling, prostitutes and visits to balsa wood model aeroplane conventions. Oh well, you win some, you lose some. I guess once you've reached the top the only way from there is down. As Genghis Khan once said: better to have tried and lost than ne'er but tried at all.

14th March, Steven Seagal and Thunderbox, The Lowry

Yes, you're right, this should have been terrible. But it wasn't. On paper Steven Seagal (Hollywood action hero turned environmental vegan pussy Buddhist hippy head case) playing the blues and singing songs about 'goin on down to Memphis' and wrestling with alligators really isn't a mouth watering prospect, but the guy really fucking can play and sing, often at the same time. Seriously, I'm not joking, this was a shit hot gig!

13th March, Chorlton Water Park

After my 13.5 seconds of fame on BBC1 last night, this morning I really wondered how much my life would change from now on. No doubt Richard and Judy will soon be inviting me round for magic mushroom parties with all of their celebrity friends like Prince Harry, Janet Street Porter and that bloke who does the Halifax adverts. Pete Doherty will probably start trying to sell me stolen toasters out of the back of his 1987 Vauxhall Nova to pay for his next fix. I'll be in The Priory twelve months from now suffering from celebrity depression and having my colon irrigated alongside racist, pig-faced, brain donor Jade Goody.

Thankfully my life hasn't changed too much, although I'll no longer be writing this birding diary myself as I have employed a team of unskilled illegal immigrant writers, working in online literary sweat shops on the outskirts of Preston and being paid less than the minimum wage, to do it for me. That's what fame and fortune does to you. Look at Paul McCartney - he used to be a great bloke when he was younger but now he's a right cunt.

To keep myself grounded in the real world, I have instructed my team of unskilled illegal immigrant writers to tell you about my birdspotting trip to Chorlton Water Park this morning. But unfortunately they went on strike, claiming that being beaten with sticks is an affront to their basic human rights, so I've upped their wage a whole English pound to £2.17 per hour and they've agreed to come back and write this diary for you... and take the beatings with good cheer. Enjoy!

This morning Master Tom saw a Mandarin at Chorlton Water Park. It was a drake. He saw it on the River Mersey. This is the first Mandarin he has seen at Chorlton Water Park. He was very pleased and sacrificed a Canada Goose in celebration. After this excitement he went to Kenworthy fields and heard a Jay singing. This is the first Jay he has ever heard singing. He describes its song as being 'very nice'. Master Tom then went to look at the ducks. There were not many ducks today, but there was a drake Scaup. He has asked us not to dwell too long on the drake Scaup as he has apparently being boring you with it for some months now. He said that you may well be interested to know that there were 7 Mute Swans this morning as well. Finally, Master Tom has told us that there should be a degree of humour in the way we write about our employer's birdwatching activities, so here is a joke:

- What do you call a really stupid door handle?
- A door knob

IMPORTANT: 12th March, Panorama, BBC1, 8.30pm

I swear this is true: listen out for me doing a voice over on hard hitting current affairs programme Panorama (I'm serious). I play Stalker 1 (a real fucking bastard) and have to describe how I beat the shit out of someone with a baseball bat. I got the part through having a 'thick Stoke accent', though I'm not sure whether they meant thick as in a broad accent, or thick as in sounding a bit stupid when I speak. I'll explain more later. Although I probably won't.

11th March

Happy Birthday to me!

10th March

Thanks in advance for all the cards and presents that I assume you're going to send me tomorrow. Seeing as it's Saturday and you've still not sent them, I presume that you're coming to my house in person tomorrow to deliver them to me? Great! Remember though, it's not the thought that counts, it's the size and price that matters, so any of that sentimental shit you can just throw away right now.

9th March, Irlam Moss

So why did I say that I'd get to Irlam for first light and let everyone know if it was still there? Good question, and one that I asked myself as I peeled myself out of bed and fell down the stairs at 5am. It was still dark when I got to Irlam Moss and met up with Al Orton and Ian Woosey who, having been unable to get to see the bird last night, was understandably a teeny weeny bit anxious. No sign in its favourite field from yesterday, so I took a walk down the road and noticed a Dunnock fly out of the hedge and land on the road in front of me. No sign in the fields around Moss Brow Farm, but it was still very early and the Wheatear was probably still in bed, the lucky bastard. That Dunnock was still on the road. Checked the roof of the farm where we saw it last night but nothing. Dunnock still on the road. I walked further down the road and wondered if the overnight clear sky had cleared it off. Dunnock still on the road and now looking strangely pale. Best check it just in case. Strange looking Dunnock this; must be one of those eastern ones with a black throat, black wing coverts and sandy brown upperparts. What eastern ones? Holy flip, it's the Wheatear!

I turned to the few birders up the road and began waving like a twat (more of a twat than usual) - they waved back. So I waved harder and started doing star jumps - they started doing the Moonwalk and 80s electro robotics. "Fucking hell, this isn't a dance off!" I shouted whilst stepping out the dance to Billy Ray Cyrus's line dancing masterpiece Achy Breaky Heart. Thankfully the Dunnock, I mean Wheatear, was amazed by my pan-global fusion dancing and decided to come even closer to me. Jason Atkinson was walking up the road from the other way and I started the whole star jumps waving thing again, throwing in a few jazz splits for variety.

It sat perfectly still for about 10 minutes surrounded by birders coming from either direction and really was showing its nuts off (as the saying goes), but it was still so dark that shutter speeds were really slow and photographs impossible. As the sun started to break over the high hedgerow the bird started moving slowly away, foraging for big worms on the exposed mud at the edges of the field. Manchester's big listers Rob and Sonia Adderley and Pete Berry looked hugely to relieved when they arrived to see the bird had done the decent thing and stayed overnight for them, and even Menzie managed to drag himself away from Merseyside listing and came along to join in with the fun and games. I had to stab myself in the eye with a pen to make sure this was actually happening, because this was a genuine first for me: I was actually enjoying myself watching birds within the boundaries of Greater Manchester. Seriously.

This bird was playing ball, and as the sun warmed up it just got closer and closer. At one stage it was just a few metres away and actually a bit too close to digiscope. Check out this photo for what I mean. I got some reasonably nice shots as did Menzie and a few others.

Messrs Duff, Hackett and Woollen arrived just after the bird flew to the other side of the field, but a quick drive round to Astley Road saw the bird feeding there on a ploughed field and a very happy gathering of birders. Sadly the bird decided to call it a day at 10.45am and headed off high south west never to be seen again.

And unfortunately that's our only allocated rarity for the year (the BBRC ration them away from the coast you see), we've peaked early. It's all downhill from now.

8th March, Irlam Moss

Yeah right! A Desert Wheatear in Manchester?

*cough-cough bollocks cough-cough*

And on Irlam Moss you say? What else is there? I suppose there's a 5 legged mutant horse with 11 arses, the head of a wasp and astro-turf for hair there as well? A Desert Wheatear in Manchester - bollocks!

... 30 minutes later...

... holy fucking Jesus Christ on a fish slice. No way! A Desert Wheatear! The first I've seen for 12 years since another inland bird at Branston GPs in Staffordshire. Kick me in the nuts! Shit in my bed! Err... do loads of other things! And so it came to pass that Irlam Moss was graced with a spectacular male Desert Wheatear, a first for Britain and the Western Palearctic, almost.

The moral of the story? There isn't one. So piss off.

7th March, Chorlton Water Park

Savaged by a dog. I love urban birding. Scaup's still around, like any of you are bothered.

Why Twitching Is Fucking Shit, Part 1: Glaucous-winged Gull

6th March, Ferryside

I suppose it was doomed from the start. Tristan stayed with us for the night so that we could get off early and pick up Dan from Stoke, and no sooner were we on the motorway than Dan received a text from Grandma Pointon telling him he'd left his bins behind - great start. Then I had my Twat Nav turned on and took us God knows where on the worst possible roads imaginable, eventually reaching Ferryside some 9 years later. And the reason for going there? The Glaucous-winged Gull of course, why else? I really should have gone on Saturday and actually seen it, but for some reason I just assumed, like many other people, that it was going to be around for a while, the locals were going to pin it down and basically it was going become quite easy to twitch. Oh, how naive!

2 Goshawks, 2nd-winter Med Gull and a couple of Red Kites were absolutely no compensation whatsoever for what was a truly fucking dire day; I'd rather give myself a paper cut on my bell end than have to go through that ever again. It was so bad that people have actually quit twitching as a result of it, and three people sellotaped plastic carrier bags over their heads and killed themselves when they got home. I just gave myself a paper cut on my bell end, it's really not as bad as it sounds if you're into that weird kind of shit, you know, like hanging yourself by the testicles from the upstairs landing whilst looking at pictures of Hilary Clinton.

The famous Dan Pointon takes a well deserved break from eating Doritos. Note lack of binoculars

We took a look at nearby Burry Port and then right down to the Millenium Dock at Llanelli where there were more gulls but none of them worth taking a shit over. My money's on the gull being at Whiteford Point about 2 miles directly opposite Burry Port - we could see upwards of 3,000 big gulls very distantly on the beach.

Tristan and Dan contemplating a suicide pact

Everything thing that could have gone wrong did go wrong: Tristan missed his last train back to Cumbria, Dan ran out of Doritos half way through the day, I got a phone call from the doctor saying I only had 4 weeks to live, and all 3 of us died in a massive car crash on the way home. I'm trying to think of a way to encapsulate just how bad the day was but I can't. Words fail me.

This is end, beautiful friend. This is the end, my only friend, the end.

***

(It was actually quite an enjoyable day, to be honest, with great weather and company. But I just thought I'd add a bit of drama by basically lying through my arse.)

2nd March, Chorlton Water Park & Audenshaw Reservoir

Lord Heston J. Millivan. The famous hybrid Barnacle x Canada Goose

3 Teal were new in, the Scaup's still at the west end and is now an immaculate drake, and Lord Millivan took an aristocratic stroll on the grass before retiring to his drawing room for the day with a brandy and a good book.

***

A great night at Audenshaw with 2 Med Gulls (adult & 2nd-winter), juvenile Great Northern Diver, drake Common Scoter and an adult Little Gull. Winner.

1st March, Chorlton Water Park

Possibly 3 hybrid Aythya this morning: the textbook Pochard x Ferruginous, the female Pochard-type hybrid with a weird shaped head that I had last month, and another female Pochard-type with sludge brown flanks and exceptionally dark Ferruginousy upperparts. Also great big bastard views of a male Sparrowhawk sat on top of the main feeding station pole from the comfort of the car.