The Early, the Mealy and the Extraordinary

After a weekend of various interesting, or very interesting records, at least if any details come to light, today was quieter. There were reports of sand martin, which seems quite reasonable as there were a few in the country and the weather had been very suitable for early arrivals, still any February records will need a bit of supporting information. Slightly more from the outer reaches were swift, although no species was specified and pallid or alpine would probably be more likely than common and a common tern, equally unseasonal. Sadly none of these were around today, neither was a reported Slavonian grebe.

There are lots of birds at the feeders now and today 2 mealy redpoll were reported, I got a picture of a lesser redpoll when I opened up the hide, not a great one but I have not featured a bird in a while.
Along with the many siskin and a few lesser redpoll there were also a pair of goldfinch, the male is pictured below, the red on the face comes to behind the eye on males.

As well as the reported mealy redpoll a bittern and the 2 smew were again seen from the Ivy North hide. On Ibsley Water the 2 black-necked grebe were seen from the Lapwing hide and I saw the water pipit from the Tern hide, where there were also 10 linnet and something over 40 pied wagtail. The wagtails were mostly males and I suspect the first wave of migrants moving north, most of the pied wagtails from Scotland and the uplands move south for the winter. Later the females become the majority and a few white wagtails on their way to Iceland will also turn up.

The moths were few but included a few new species for the year. The catch included common Quaker, small Quaker, Hebrew character, dotted border and small brindled beauty.