A wild week on Islay, with snow in the Rest And Be Thankful on the way up. An otter was fishing off Jura as we sailed up the sound.

Islay did not escape the severe weather in December and we have seen only one Stonechat and two Hen Harriers. There are no Snipe or Woodcock around and we have encountered only two flocks of Twite and Chaffinches, comprising of one hundred plus birds in each flock.

Along the West coast fourteen goats and four kids were feeding on the sea cliffs with wild waves in the background. The highlight has been watching a female Crossbill feeding her three young that had just left their nest. She would take a pine cone, work her way around it extracting the seeds, then fly over to one of the young to regurgitate the food to it. The young would flick its wings in excitement as it was being fed . This is the first time we have ever experienced this activity from a bird that must have laid its eggs in all the severe weather of last December. Perhaps this weather brought the cones to seed thus enabling the Crossbills to breed?

This week has been my annual film tour of South West Scotland. I drove two hundred and forty miles to Stranraer and decided to note how many raptors I saw en route. It proved conclusively how the Buzzard is now our commonest bird of prey and how the last three severe Winters have had a devastating effect on the Kestrel. The totals were fourteen Buzzards, three Kestrels and two Sparrowhawks. I arrived in Stranraer to watch the Starlings wheeling over the pier as they flew to roost under the pier. Two Peregrines were fighting over one that they had captured.

At the Loch Ken Kite feeding station there were more than seventy KItes coming to the food put out for them. In the severe weather in December apparently there were as many as one hundred and forty present! I also visited the RSPB reserve at Mersehead to admire the Spitzbergen Barnacle Geese (see photo) and dozens of Pintails.

Prior to my film shows each evening there was much talk about the Big Garden Birdwatch and some of the birds seen during the hours count. One garden had more than two hundred House Sparrows, another had more than one hundred Bramblings, another had seventy plus Siskins and yet another had twenty four Yellow Hammers. What a difference to the gardens around Manchester.

In our garden this week there have been two Siskins, the first of the Winter and a record twenty one Collared Doves. The Willow Tit still appears occasionally.

It is good to know that around South Manchester there are still over five hundred Waxwings present in flocks of up to one hundred and sixty strong. Around Rochdale there are very few with one seen today on a drive to Hollingworth Lake.

After mentioning last week that there were very few Jack Snipe around it was a pleasant surprise on the 31st January to come across two only twenty feet apart on Hopwood. It had been -5°C overnight and these are the required conditions to bring Jack Snipe together in iron water ditches. As soon as the frost had gone the following day there were no Snipe to be found.

The Big Garden Birdwatch last weekend was undertaken in very mild conditions with very few finches present. We did, however, log 11 House sparrows, 2 Redwing, 4 Bullfinches, 1 Song Thrush, 9 Blackbirds, 6 Blue Tits, 1 Chaffinch, 6 Collared Doves, 1 Dunnock, 2 Goldfinches, 4 Great Tits, 2 Robins, 6 Starlings, 1 Woodpigeon and 1 Willow Tit during our one hour watch.

This weeks photo is one of the garden Jays taken during last months harsh weather. Its colours seem to stand out better in the snow,

Not much birding done this week as I have had a very heavy film show schedule with two shows during the afternoon. However, the garden has again produced twenty species on two days. On the 26th we had fifteen Greenfinches and a garden record of six Bullfinches ( three males and three females). A friend called with a female Sparrowhawk that had just broken its neck through flying into his window. We were examining this in the garage when he exclaimed that he had just seen a Willow Tit on one of our feeders – a first sighting in Rochdale for him but a bird we now take for granted.

A visit to the hills on the 28th produced a Kestrel and two hundred Pink Footed Geese flying westwards. On 29th even though the temperature dropped to minus four overnight no Snipe or Woodcock were encountered locally. I received a report from golfers on Hopwood that on the 22nd they released a large hawk that was caught by its jesses on a barbed wire fence. It is a pity they didn’t remove the jesses at the same time to give it a sporting chance.

The BTO now inform us that following last months severe weather over one hundred Barn Owls have been recovered dead, twice the number that would have been expected in a normal period of snowy weather. These of course are ones that have been found so there will be many times that number still lying out there. The photo above shows the river Hodder in Bowland on Christmas Eve and as you can see it is completely frozen. As I film Kingfishers and Dippers on the river it remains to be seen whether any have managed to survive.

Whilst over at Bolton during the week I came across a flock of one hundred Waxwings. It was of course impossible to drive past without spending half an hour watching them. There were few berries around so they will be moving on soon.

On Hopwood on the twenty first of January two Woodcock were present plus a Green Woodpecker trying to find ants. A visit to Dovestones produced good views of Siskins and at least half a dozen Bramblings.

During the week the garden has been exceptional with twenty or more species recorded feeding on four consecutive days. Willow Tit, Nuthatch, Song Thrush and Long Tailed Tits have been the highlights.

This weeks photo is of one of the Fieldfares that were feeding on a single hawthorne bush at the rear of our garden last month. The garden has certainly starred this week with two Buzzards overhead on the 11th January, five Bullfinches on the 13th ( two females and three males) and eighteen Blue Tits on the 5th. Having seen Waxwings eating apples on a tree down the road I decided to put some red apples on branches in the garden. I didn’t have to wait long for on the 12th at 9.00am I walked out of the back door and heard a Waxwing. Two of them were at the back of the garden looking at the apples. Unfortunately at that very moment the window cleaner appeared with his ladder and they flew off! However it shows that it will work and more apples have been put out and I await their arrival.

During a short walk around Tandle Hill on the 13th we heard a Green Woodpecker calling for some time.