How ironic that after featuring a Woodcock in the garden on my blog of two weeks ago one should fly up from under our hedge on 18th January. This bird was of course a truly wild bird sheltering from the freezing South East wind and was a first for the garden. It was a perfect start to a day that produced a record twenty four species in the garden including the male Blackcap featured on the blog today. There was also a record five Jays feeding together that day and the appearance of thirteen Starlings and our regular ten Long Tailed Tits.

Hopwood has been exceptional this last week and on the fourteenth, as the snow fell, thirty Reed Buntings were roosting in the long grasses together with twenty two Snipe that were also sheltering from the blizzard. Two days later two Jack Snipe were feeding plus a scattering of Woodcock. Even two Goldcrest were present one day in a Scots pine at dusk.

The sixteenth of January produced the only sunshine of the week so I ventured on to the high moorlands looking for Mountain Hares. At 10am when I parked the car it was -3°C and with a brisk wind the chill factor would have made it closer to -15°C. I walked for two hours in the frost and powder snow and saw four Mountain Hares from a distance but never took the camera out of its case. There was much evidence of where the hares had dug down through the snow to reach the heather and grasses on which they feed nocturnally. I hope to go again on a better day!

Today the 12th is the first day this year that we have had some decent sunshine. Earlier in the week, with the mild weather, both Song Thrush and Mistle Thrush were in full song.

On Hopwood Woodcock are still being seen and I flushed only my second Jack Snipe of the Winter along one of the fairways on the golf course. Scarlet Elf Cup fungi was out in a small copse of trees nearby.

With lots of fog this week the garden has, once again, come into its own. Long Tailed Tits have been every day and peaked at seventeen on the 9th. A new bird for the Winter was a male Blackcap feeding on a fat square – only the second we have ever had in the garden. Three different male Sparrowhawks have hunted the garden during the week with one clipping the back of my head as I put the food out. A Blackbird was rescued from the talon’s of one of these males but another did not fair as well. A redwing even roosted one night in the only pine tree in the garden – a tree that thirty years ago was covered in Christmas baubles inside the house!.

A Woodcock in your garden would be high on most peoples New Year wish list. The one in this week’s photo is in my garden but the circumstances surrounding its arrival are not what you would expect. I was walking through Hopwood woods when a Carrion Crow and a Magpie that were attacking something on the ground caught my attention. I was just in time to save the Woodcock that had some feathers plucked from its breast but otherwise it was in tact and should have been able to fly. To save it from the Crows I brought it home and placed it in the garden vegetation while it recovered , then returned it to the woods at dusk when the crows had gone to roost and it was safe. I was pleased to see it fly off and my first good deed of the year was complete. However, the story does not end there. Several days later,as I walked through the woods, I noticed the remains of at least two Woodcock that had been predated as they roosted at the base of Silver Birch trees under a canopy of bracken. Had the crows discovered how to catch Woodcock at their diurnal roost sites or was the culprit a Fox and the crows were just finishing off the job? My encounter with just two crows and no sighting of a Fox would suggest that the crows were the culprits. As Hopwood Woods are the most important wintering site in Greater Manchester for Woodcock this would be a worrying trend especially when recent satellite tracking has proved that some of our wintering Woodcock have travelled more than 4000 kilometres from Russia. In the late 1970’s I caught and ringed one Woodcock in Hopwood Woods. The following year it was killed by a car as it was flying across a road in Belgium!

During last month we had more than twenty species of bird in the garden on every single day. On New Years Day a record twenty two Long Tailed Tits fed together.

Last year’s newsletter started with the problems caused by rain. As we are all by now aware this year has even surpassed that by producing the wettest year ever recorded. However, despite all the odds I have had an exceptional years filming.

It started back in January by finally getting to grips with the Pennine bird that has eluded me for more than forty years, the Hawfinch. They really are spectacular birds with that amazing bill and all the early mornings in the frost waiting patiently for them under their favourite Hornbeam trees were worth while when the film was viewed.

I always enjoy my February lecture tour for the Scottish Ornithologist club and this year it was the penultimate one. After thirty years of wandering around the hills of Galloway I finally had good views of a Great Grey Shrike. It was a good Winter up there for Crossbills and I had some rewarding encounters with them as they drank in roadside pools. How I am going to miss this tour in the future and all the friends I have made and stayed with over those thirty years. There are not many places in Britain where you can have your evening meal as you watch a Hen Harrier and Peregrine go to roost and a Barn Owl commences hunting!

A non birding trip to Speyside in March produced a close encounter with Ptarmigan as we walked up Cairngorm and by the time we arrived at the top we had one very tired Golden Retriever. As usual the Grants Arms was excellent and we are due back there next March when some birds will be on the menu (not literally)!

While England sank under the deluge our trips to Islay produced fantastic weather and lots of filming. I took time out to inspect the seabirds on the West coast and was pleased to see that all the Kittiwakes had healthy young, indicating a good food supply. As usual Islay’s orchids were outstanding and we even returned in late July to admire the Marsh Helleborines.

The later part of the year has been livened up by the arrival of my favourite bird the Waxwing. I had forgotten how good it was to watch a flock of over a hundred descend on a Rowan tree, only feet in front of you to devour the berries. The flight shot on my blog on December 16th is one of my favourite shots of all time.

The undoubted highlight of the Pennine year was the finding and filming of a female Barn Owl who had laid her eggs on the ground in a corner of a barn. Daily filming was taken of her as her eggs hatched and the young even climbed out on to her back and inter acted with a singing Swallow on a beam above. It was one of the most exceptional events I have ever seen in more than forty years of filming Raptors and highlights our latest DVD ‘A Bird for all Seasons’. This will be our last DVD and incorporates seven years of filming as it follows the lives of eighty species of birds through the seasons of the year. It is proving very popular and one purchaser informed me that he had already watched it thirteen times since he had purchased it twenty days ago!!! My DVD can be purchased through my website or telephoning me on 01706 631770.

I would like to wish you all a very Happy New Year for 2013.

Whenever we have wet and windy conditions birds flock to the garden feeders and this last week has been the best in the forty four years that we have lived in Castleton with two new records and one equaled. Firstly we had a minimum of twenty two species per day and on three days twenty three species. On the 20th we had a record twenty Blue Tits feeding together, plus on the same day five Jays, which equaled our previous best. Today, the 23rd, at dawn a record fifteen Long Tailed Tits fed on the feeders before the male Sparrowhawk appeared and missed my head by inches!

Along the canal at dawn ,on the 19th, two Waxwings were feeding on Hawthorne berries but had gone ten minutes later. At Rhodes Lodges on the same day four male Goosanders were feeding.

In has taken up to now this Winter to locate my first Jack Snipe in the Thornham fields, coupled with two Woodcock at Unsworth and twenty five Waxwings in Ramsbottom. I was able to chalk up my first grand slam of the Winter on a perfect day on the 13th. Added to this was a roosting Long Eared Owl but I missed the Short Eared Owl that had been hunting the moors the previous evening. The Waxwings were a classic example of perseverance for only one bird was feeding on a tiny Rowan up to noon and then from nowhere twenty four others joined it to give a bit of sparkle to a perfect Winters day. None of them provided a photo like this one on the blog this week. This photo was only one out of more than two hundred that I took in Hulme two weeks ago. It begs the question is there a better one out there waiting to be taken?

On another sparkling day this week I visited Leighton Moss to look for Bitterns. It is my bogey bird and none were visible on the ice. At least seven Water Rails were squealing in the reeds but even these failed to show well enough for a photo. However, I did make a call on one of the major rivers on my return journey and was rewarded with my first ever Pennine sighting of an Otter with two young. Unfortunately they were only distant views and by the time I had approached closer, in true Otter fashion, they had disappeared.

In the cold weather our garden continues to star with more than twenty species of birds seen on every day this month. On the 9th we had a new species as a superb male Kestrel descended on a Blue Tit in the Hawthorne at the rear of the garden. Fortunately the Blue Tit escaped to live another day. Overnight on the 10th a Tawny Owl was calling – the first we have heard for several years.