Winters icy grip has re-established itself again the last few days - my daughters school closed Thursday afternoon and Friday so I have been based in my office at home which has an intermitent connection hence my lack of posts. Back in the office today in the glorious sunshine, although it is slightly cold!
We have had all the windows replaced in the volunteers accomodation last week - not before time as you could put your hand through the frames of the cold ones, this will hopefully make the house warmer! Of course when these things are planed you cannot plan the weather and so on Wednesday and Thursday when the old windows were coming out it was a blizzard here - the office was colder than ever, evan colder than when the boiler broke! They are all in now and it certainly has made the place look smarter, there is less of a gale blowing down the stairs but we will have to see whether we have to turn the heating down to see what sort of a difference it makes to warming the place up!
With the return of the snow and ice we have had another influx of farmland birds searching for seeds. This time the main highlight though has been corn buntings with a minimum count of 200 on the reserve over the weekend, unlike the last spell though there are no yellowhammers!
The wardening team carried out the February goose roost count on Sunday. Unfortunatley due to my wifes shift pattern I was not able to join them - it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the temperature was below minus eight! The geese have again reacted to this weather and many have moved south but there was still a healthy 13000 coming out of roost. Other ducks of note 1300 wigeon, 490 teal, 700 mallard and 230 goldeneye.
The one disappointment in this cold weather has been the lack of winter gulls such as glaucous and iceland gulls and no cold weather ducks like smew - as a result our year list is stuck on 109 still!
Dom