Visitors from the arctic

I'm looking forward to seeing what wetland birds the winter blows in to the Hull Valley. Visitors from the arctic frequently include pink-footed, barnacle and white-fronted geese and whooper swans. The resident greylags and canadas at Hornsea Mere are habituated to flock to any human being appearing with a plastic bag. I noticed a solitary barnacle goose among some resident geese last year and was amused to watch it carry on grazing oblivious as all its companions charged furiously towards a visitor who stepped into their midst to feed them. Clearly this wild northerner hadn't learnt what comes out of plastic bags. Actually this behaviour can get quite annoying at the Mere as the birds appear the minute you stop your car and some are very persistent, like this swan who had a good look at us through the car window.

It's good to see that the bitterns are back at both Hornsea Mere and Tophill. Two of my favourite ducks, the red breasted merganser and the goosander, have also been in evidence. The merganser has a delightfully adolescent spiky hairdo. The male goosander is truly beautiful bird with a bottle green head, crimson bill and sleek white body flushed with salmon pink. We saw both at Tophill last year but unfortunately too far away to get good pictures.

This super little family made lovely end to a fantastic week of wildlife in Skye last year, however. It was pouring with rain, getting darker all the time and seeming like it was time to turn in for the night, when along came this adult with seven babies - each with a miniature version of the distinctive sawtoothed bill. I would love to see goosanders with chicks as they have a very endearing habit of letting them ride 'piggy back' - sometimes the whole brood struggling to get on board at once!

Waxwing weather

It's waxwing weather. Temperatures here are below freezing and we've had several falls of snow over the last week. It's this kind of weather that blows in flocks of birds like waxwings, redwings and fieldfares that feast on berries in trees and hedges. I had a most unlikely encounter with waxwings one bitter, icy morning when I arrived at work and spotted a bush full of these beautiful passerines in the hospital car park. They are so named because their wings look as if they have been splashed with scarlet and yellow sealing wax.

The redwing and the fieldfare sit at opposite ends of the size range of British thrushes. The redwing, distinguished by a russet underwing which is most apparent in flight, is the smallest whilst the fieldfare is a large thrush which is distinguishable from song and mistle thrushes by a lot of grey in its colouring - on the head and rump - and v shaped spotting on the breast that gives the appearance of a herringbone tweed waistcoat! Fieldfares are usually seen in flocks and prefer fields and hedges but sometimes drift into gardens in a harsh winter. Last winter a relative told me he had watched a flock of fieldfares strip the rowan in his garden bare whilst on the phone to a friend!

So far I haven't seen either species this winter but both have been reported at nearby places in the Hull valley. I have had to make do with a huge mistle thrush hopping around my neighbours front lawn but I shall be keeping my eyes open and the binoculars handy.