HAPPY NEW YEAR 2023

It’s New Year’s Day and I’ve decided to keep a list of birds seen this year – I don’t always, because it can take the fun out of birding – but not push myself and try to be as low carbon as possible, so I set out on foot to Calderstones Park with a very achievable total of 30 in my mind.

Birds one and two are magpie (common) and common gull (uncommon, despite the name), seen from the bedroom window. There have been a lot of common gulls on the playing field this winter, but no herring gulls at all, which is unusual.

I take the winding roads route up to the park, enviously eyeing up the houses in this leafy suburb – although not so much the two huge trees growing out of the pavement. Whose idea was that?? Two great-spotted woodpeckers chasing each other along the wooded edge of the park are the first birds I hear and see as I pass the sandstone boundary wall. They are one of the first species to become active in the new year; the males should be drumming continually soon. Jays are usually prolific along this path because of the nuts, but not today.

I turn left, and walk up the grassy slope towards the lake. The usual suspects are panhandling for bread from the families who come here for that reason. Feral pigeons, Canada geese, mallards, and coot and moorhen – all are added to the list. Not the most exciting species I will see this year, but they have to be ‘ticked’ once – and each has its own charms, if you just look deeply enough.

Sunshine and muddy paths at Calderstones Park

It’s a beautiful morning now, blue skies and mild for the time of year, although there was persistent heavy rain overnight and the previous day, and I manage to find *a lot* of the boggy areas as I continue up to the top path and the field where the thrushes like to hang out. There aren’t any on the field itself – but there is a juvenile herring gull, so that’s another tick – but a small flock of redwings suddenly flies into the branches of the bare trees ahead of me, and I spend a few minutes craning my neck this way and that as they move restlessly overhead, finally settling in the alders where I saw siskin last winter.

Boggy conditions at Calderstones Park

Leaving the park and carefully crossing Yew Tree Road, I walk along the footpath towards Allerton Golf Course, diverting into the small woodland to see what’s around. It’s usually a good place for ‘little’ birds and, yes: a nuthatch calls, and a party of long-tailed tits ‘tseeps’ its way through the bare branches. I’ve learned to scan these winter flocks as they are not always single species; other small birds may join and feed alongside them. And so it proves today: I’m thrilled to see a goldcrest with them but just on the edge of the flock. And later, back at the sandstone wall boundary at the bottom of the park, another LTT flock contains another goldcrest. I don’t think I’ve ever seen two in one day before!

Goldcrest – image by Missy Osborn from New Forest, England, CC BY-SA 2.0 httpscreativecommons.orglicensesby-sa2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

We will finish Part 1 here, with me delighted with the goldcrest and about to take my life in my hands (not literally, I hope) as I head towards the golf course.