End of Year Mop-Up - December, 2012

It's official - 2012 has been the wettest year in England since records began (whenever that might be?)! Many people, I'm sorry to say, have been mopping up in the literal sense, having been flooded to various extents. I'm one of the lucky ones who have only suffered minor inconvenience, having had to make a few diversions to avoid flooded roads, but it has severely curtailed my bird watching activities. This is, therefore, a brief mop-up of what I have done over the past couple of weeks and not covered in my blog so far.

Owls

I've done very little in the way of owl watching in December, although I have managed to add another two new Little Owl sites to my list, and I have had a couple of sightings of Short-eared Owl at the site where I had good sightings last winter.

I've not got any more images from my LO Site No.32, but I did get some from my most recent site (No.33). These were taken under extremely difficult circumstances - it was very dull and windy, and the environment was very noisy! I won't say more than that, but my pal Titus, who introduced me to the farmer here, will know what I mean! Hopefully I will be able to return in better conditions and get some improved images!

Little Owl - my new Site No.33

Just before Christmas, I also had a bit more luck at my LO Site No.31 in Calke Park. It was cold, dull, and breezy, and I couldn't find an owl to start with. Then one flew from behind a tree which was much nearer than I'd seen the owl here before. Unfortunately it flew to the ground, doubling the distance between us. I managed a few grabbed shots from against the fence before it flew back towards me, and landed in the tree - with the trunk between me and the owl again.

Little Owl - my Site No.31

I hung around for a couple of hours in the hope that it would fly back down to the ground, but it didn't, and the only way I could see it was still there was to walk away along the fence and look back - as shown below.

Little Owl - my Site No.31

Garden Birds

On 21st December my annual Garden List reached a new record with the addition of a Brambling. I only count birds that actually land in my garden. Fly-overs do not count. My previous annual record was 31 species, and I now stand at 32 species for 2012. I'm very pleasantly surprised by this as the elimination of the garden pond 2/3 the way through 2011 means that I'm not now getting the birds that used to be attracted by the water or the fish. Missing from previous year's sightings are Grey Heron and Grey and Pied Wagtails. Also missing are Common Pheasant and Fieldfare. I only started records in 2009. 'Firsts' to the garden list this year are Goldcrest, Willow Tit, and Chiffchaff, although the first two have definitely been seen in the garden before I started records.

The recent sightings of Brambling, Blackcap, Bullfinch and Redwing have not, unfortunately, continued, with a pair of Lesser Redpoll being the only uncommon (for our garden) birds visiting us on a fairly regular basis. The weather has not been conducive to garden photography, but here is a token recent image.

Lesser Redpoll (male) - our garden

Other Birds

I've not really done much birdwatching that I've not already reported on. A couple of return visits to Calke Park (one on 17th December and one on Boxing Day) served to remind me to attempt better images of Marsh Tit ( got some, but still not better, on 17th) and gave me my first Treecreeper images from Calke on Boxing Day, when the weather was pretty grim (but, again, I need to do a lot better).

Marsh Tit - Calke Park

Treecreeper - Calke Park

So what will the New Year bring?

Tomorrow the Garden List starts again from zero - always an exciting time for me!

For Christmas I got Adobe Photoshop Elements 11. Until now, I've use Corel Photopaint for all my photo editing, but I'm looking forward to getting to grips with Photoshop. So far the results have been far from encouraging - I've not yet found a way of loading multiple images into Photoshop, other than by calling them in one by one (clicking the first, and then clicking the last with the shift key held down, only results in the first getting loaded). Any hints and tips - particularly where to find a good learning resource - would be much appreciated.

I'm hoping for a prolonged spell of dry, bright, and windless weather so that I can get in some serious owling.

Other than that, all that is left for 2012 is to wish you all a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2013, and to thank you for your past kind encouragement and support .