The past 24 hours has seen Lodmoor transformed into Lapland or rather Lapwing land. Give or take 500 of these beautiful and charismatic waders had taken up residence interspersed with the occasional close relative the golden plover, (nowadays a very scarce winter visitor to the moor) with dunlin, black-tailed godwits, snipe and the dowitcher completing a nice wader assemblage. There were quite large congregations of teal, mallard, shoveller and gadwall concentrated mainly in the patches of ice free water with at least three buzzard and a marsh harrier overhead.
A smallish area of open water in the reeds off Southdown Avenue contained a dense wildfowl gathering (pictured below) consisting mainly of tufty's and pochard but also containing 7 scaup including a single adult male.
The chill has prevented us from completing the pollarding of willows that we had in store for the week as the disturbance of revving chainsaw would put the birds to flight when they are needing to feed and conserve energies to battle the cold, but at least this has enabled us to get some detailed bird counts completed!
Thanks Nick, that's very informative, as always.