Friday dawned frosty and slightly foggy before clearing to a day of blue skies and winter sunshine; as has been the case on the preceding couple of days. It was my usual weekly day off and I made the most of it by visiting a couple of local sites. . I'd already visited Stanton Park earlier in the month on a rather damp day so thought I'd try and get some photos of the regular woodland birds while it was sunny. The feeding stations were mainly empty so I added some peanuts and seeds of my own and waited to see what would appear.
It didn't take long for the usual blue tits and great tits to find the food, also three robins, a dunnock, a couple of chaffinches, coal tit, marsh tit. and nuthatch. A blackbird also made an appearance and my first song thrush of the year. Up in the tree tops I'd already spotted a jay and on the lake were lots of gulls, including lesser black backed gull.
After lunch I met up with the local U3A birding group for a walk around Highworth's country park at Pentylands, We started by walking up part of the hedge lined lane I'd not used before which runs past Highworth's sewage plant. Here we saw both pied and grey wagtails. We could only walk on part of the fields as they are currently being dug up by Thames Water to lay a huge pipe across the middle and you can't get across from one side to the other.
However, we did manage a total of 30 species between us, and I was pleased to see my first bullfinch of the year although too far off to photograph.
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