Hello there, as my title suggests, it was 14C today and beautifully mild. The first thing that struck me this aft was noise. Those black headed gulls are back! They seemed to have started to arrive last Monday and have been continuing to build up their numbers this week.
I'll start today with Twitter news from various sites in the Dearne Valley and at Adwick in particular. Thanks go to all those who tweet the sightings from our satellite sites.
Karen Williams was there early on and tweeted the following: 3 redshank, 2 ringed plover, 4 shelduck, 2 little egret, 148+ lapwing, one pink footed goose and one white fronted goose.
Nigel Smith was also at Adwick today and followed Karen's sightings with these... 4 grey heron, one little egret, 3 little grebes, 2 mute swans, 45 Canada Geese , 76 greylag geese, the white fronted and pink footed geese as before, 52 mallards, 117 teal, 148 wigeon, 82 gadwall, 15 shovelor, 2 shelduck, 6 tufted duck, 64 coots and 56 moorhens. Nigel hadn't quite finished, here's the rest of his list - 647 black headed gulls, 8 common gull, 145 lapwing, 3 redshank, 3 ringed plover, 22 golden plover, 3 snipe and 4 grey partridge.
Next news today from Twitter was from the Barnsley Birders. They were at Broomhill and told us that our long staying hawfinch was still there along with 4 goldeneye and a flyover from a sandwich tern! I have a bad memory for dates but I'm thinking that's quite early... David Bamforth told us that from the archives, early sightings of this bird have been as follows - singles at Worsbrough on the 28th March 2005 & Broomhill Flash on the 30th March 1985.
The Barnsley Birders then carried on to say that both the firecrest and the yellow browned warbler were still to be seen at Wombwell Ings.
Karen was then back at Old Moor with these sightings - 13 snipe, 7 oystercatchers, a green sandpiper, 9 shelduck, a sparrowhawk, two great spotted woodpeckers, and a green woodpecker.
In the Tree Sparrow Farm today there were four yellowhammer. Three males and here's the female.
Next let's go to the hide at Wath Ings. Here today came sightings of 2 shelduck, 10 mute swans, lots of cormorants (didn't count those...), shovelor, a female pochard, lapwing, linnets, black headed gulls, coots and five goldeneye (3m, 2f).
Despite the grey afternoon, love was in the air for these two mute swans :)
From the hide at the Wader Scrape came sightings of a green sandpiper, a great crested grebe, wigeon, Canada geese, shovelor, teal, lapwing, goosander and a buzzard.
And, this strange looking 'Canalag' goose!
There is a report in the book of a med gull seen today from the Family Hide. We can't confirm it just yet but fingers crossed.
I didn't have time to go down to the reedbeds today but early on, Karen had a booming male bittern in reedbed 1 and another bittern with no obvious blue lores in reedbed 5. 'Lores' are the bit between the eyes and the nostrils of a bird.
That's it for today unless you saw anything else. If you did, then do let us know.
I'll leave you with a recent photo of a male chaffinch in the bird garden. They always look stunning at this time of year don't you think?