A bryophyte wall in Silverdale

Thank goodness for bryophytes! For a large part of the year they bring the majority of colour to the countryside.

This photo is from North Wales and illustrates well the colour bryophytes bring to a winter woodland.

Here is a typical bryophyte wall in Silverdale, north Lancashire. I can't put a name to them all yet, but there is a large diversity of bryophytes on every wall. Below is a sample of the species I found. Other species which I found but neglected to photograph include the liverworts Marchesinia mackaii MacKay's pouncewort and Plagiochila porelloides bfid crestwort.

Thuidium Tamariscinum common tamarisk-moss.

I'm fairly certain that this is Ctenidium molluscum comb moss, except that my book says it only rarely has captules. This clearly has a few. Perhaps I just got lucky.....

Neckera crispa crisped neckera.

Atrichum undulatum common smoothcap.

Calliergonella cuspidata pointed spear-moss.

The liverwort Plagiochilla porelloides lesser featherwort.

Wild daffodils Narcissus pseudonarcissus. Regular readers will know just how much I love the daffodil family, I've seen some crackers across Europe, notably in the Picos de Europa mountains of Spain here and more recently in Cyprus here and here. The problem in the UK is that there are so many garden escapes or deliberate planting of non-native species, that it's actually quite difficult at times to know if you're looking at a wild plant or not. However, wild daffodils have pale yellow flowers with a darker central trumpet and grey green leaves, and are more beautiful than most garden plants.

Snowdrops Galanthus nivalis

Whixall Moss

I called in at Whixall Moss in Shropshire today where there has been a water pipit on the flood near Morris Bridge. Amazingly I found the bird immediately and it showed pretty well through the scope, one of the best water pipits I have ever seen in fact. Lots of teal, shoveler and wigeon also on the flood, and a raven flew over.

Leighton Moss

Bearded tits and marsh harrier from the causeway at Leighton Moss today, also several green woodpeckers calling at various places along our walk, especially around Leighton Hall and Jack Scout. A beautiful day to be out and about.

Year: 165 (Bearded tit); This time 2015 (153); 2014 (164)

The Causeway Hide as it's now known.

Frogs spawning.

Old Man's Beard Clematis vitalba

From Offa's Dyke at World's End to the Old Baths

After several failed attempts over the past few years, this morning I finally caught up with the great grey shrike at World's End, Llangollen, seen in the clearfell area adjacent to the Offa's Dyke footpath.

You can see the Offa's Dyke footpath to the right and above the shrike, winding its way back to the car. While we were watching the shrike a male and two female black grouse flew over, and we saw several red grouse.

However, we spent most of the day on the Wirral. It was a 9.90m high tide, but there was no wind at all to drive it in, so it didn't come close to the sea wall at the Old Bath's, Parkgate. Still plenty of good birds to see though, and in fact we had better views than usual of at least one short-eared owl, a ringtail hen harrier and a juvenile merlin and distant views of two great white egrets. At least 50 little egrets at Parkgate.

After a brief stop at Burton Mere Wetlands, where there were at least 32 avocets, we moved on to Burton Marsh at Denhall Hall Lane where we saw another four short-eared owls, ringtail hen harrier and a merlin. Another 30 or so little egrets on Burton Marsh.

Year: 164 (Great grey shrike, avocet)

Short-eared owl at Decca Pools, Denhall Lane

 ...at Parkgate

...and dive bombing prey!

Ringtail hen harrier at Parkgate.

I'm thinking that this is a moulting juvenile male rather than a female given the the ground colour of the underparts and both the upperwing and underwing patterns (only light barring on the underwing primaries especially). Also the wings look quite slim for a female.

Engrailed moth on the lights at Burton Mere Wetlands.

Houghton Green Flash, Winwick

Water levels are up at Houghton Green Flash at the moment, due to the heavy rain we have had over the winter. It's still a shadow of its former self, but at least it's possible to go with some hope of seeing something and today I even managed a year tick in the shape of six grey partridge! Not much variety on the water, but 40 wigeon were nice and about 20 mallard. I also flushed a couple of snipe and a buzzard flew over. Would it be naive to hope that the water levels might start to recover now? Probably.

Year: 163 (Grey Partridge)

You can see where the shoreline was last year, roughly at the point where the vegetation ends. I'm not actually sure whether this is an improvement or not, at least last year there was some mud for waders, but at the moment the water goes into the tall vegetation leaving virtually no shoreline for birds like redshank or little ringed plover etc. Still I'd rather see the water levels go up and the site recover over time, but we'll have to wait and see.

Rutland Water and Pugney's

We spent the morning and early afternoon at Rutland Water where there has been an impressive variety of avian species over the past couple of weeks. First off we headed to the Shoveler hide to look for a juvenile long-billed dowitcher which had been present for about 10 days. The bird duly obliged and showed as well as any I have seen. It was my tenth but the first for seven years. While we were in the hide we got another couple of year ticks in the form of red kite and Egyptian goose. On the way back to the visitor center we called in at the Sandpiper hide and saw three smew, a drake and two redheads.

In the North Arm of Rutland Water, from Fisherman's car park, the red-necked grebe which I saw last December was still present and now showing real signs of summer plumage, with a partially red neck and bright yellow on the bill. Then moving a mile further north, but still in the North Arm, we managed to locate the party of three summer plumage black-necked grebes associating with a single winter plumage Slavonian grebe. Fortunately we also managed to find both common grebe species, little and great crested, meaning that we had seen all five British species of grebe on the same day at the same location. That's definitely a first for me!

It was still only 13:30 and we had seen just about everything that we were likely to see at Rutland Water, 61 species I recorded but with birds such as wren, reed bunting, song thrush, pied wagtail, collared dove and greenfinch missing from the list, I'm sure that if we had stayed all day and made the effort we could easliy have reached 75 - 80 species in the day just at Rutland Water. An impressive total by any standards.

However at this point we decided to make for Pugney's Country Park in West Yorkshire, where there had been a 1st winter ferruginous duck on the lake behind the Swan and Cygnet pub. When we arrived the bird had just disappeared into the reedbed, as ferruginous ducks are prone to do, but it soon reappeared and we had excellent views of the bird in the afternoon sunlight. A really smart duck, my first for 12 years and for me probably the bird of the day.

Year: 162 (Long-billed dowitcher, ferruginous duck, red-necked grebe, Slavonian grebe, Egyptian goose, red kite). This time last year I was on 146, this time 2014 I was on 161.

First winter female ferruginous duck. Notice the distinctive head shape, longish bill and bill pattern. I must admit, I didn't realise until this evening that female and male ferruginous ducks have different bill patterns.  When I was watching the bird in the field I was a bit worried about the bill pattern on this bird because it wasn't as I expected. However on reviewing the photographs the bill pattern does seem to be consistent with a female.

Another slight concern is what appears to be grey on the birds back in some photographs. I don't remember this being evident in the field, but if it was really present it would probably indicate a pochard influence in the birds genes. However in other photographs this is not obvious, and it's probably due to the harsh late afternoon winter sunlight combined with the reflection off the water. This has been a well watched bird and I assume that those who have seen it better than I have ruled out a hybrid.

On this photo there is no appearance of grey on the back and the bill is perfect. In fact everything looks fine.

Here are another five images of the bird which show how misleading it can be to rely on photographs when assessing the id of a bird. In these photos the head shape looks perfect, the bill is perfect and there is no sign of any grey on the back. A smart bird!

Long-billed dowitcher.

Egyptian geese.

Rutland Water.

Shorelark and Snow Bunting, Cleethorpes Beach

There was a cracking shorelark on the beach at Cleethorpes today, about 200m west of Buck Beck car park. Back in 1988 I saw a pair, including a singing male on near the summit of a Greek mountain. Todays bird was nearly the match of that, bright yellow in the sunlight and with a nice pair of horns as well. Also on the beach, a single snow bunting.

Year: 156 (Shorelark)

There's been a shorelark reported from Cleethorpes beach on and off since around Christmas, but it's been very difficult to catch up, possibly ranging as far as Tetney Marshes to the south and perhaps even Spurn on the otherside of the Humber.  Speaking to a local today he wasn't convinced that this bird was the same as that reported earlier in the year, but whatever the truth, it's a cracker.