10/07/2021 My Garden, Abram, Wigan

Green Finch: Saturday morning enjoying may garden feeder visitors. Quiet during this time of year as there is lots of natural food around, but I'm still toppoing the feeders up regularly.  

I've been tending my garden for over seven years now and it's a working in progress, an ever changing habitat of wild flowers, ornamental plating  and vegetable growing to a creation of a new of a pond.

Song Thrush: The best birds I've had in the garden during my tennear include bulfinch, lesser redpoll, siskin and willow tit. 

 

21/08/2014 Houghton Green Pool

Ruff: I was hoping for a few common sands however the only wader around the edges was this single Ruff.

Being my first Ruff at Houghton pool I was happy to take that trade and spend an hour snapping the bird.

The most notable thing was the shear amount of hirundines flying over the pool. Tons of Swallow and House Martin with a smaller number of Sand Martin among them.

Sand Martin:  I set myself the challenge of capturing an image of one of the hirundines swooping over the pool, so I sat on the edge of the bank facing in to the wind and snapped away.

Pied Wagtail: While sitting there getting frustrated with my inability of freezing an in-focus image of a Swallow, a huge flock of Linnet started feeding in the grass on the far bank and a family of pied wags came rather close.

10/09/2013 Billinge Hill

Yellow Wagtail:  This was my first visit up the highest point in St Helens and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was Paul Brady who invited me for a spot of patching and we met Damain another local Billing Hill patcher.

Pied Wagtail: On the way up we spotted a few Yellowhammer a single willow tit and a female Sparrowhawk. One the way down we spotted a load of Tree Sparrow, Yellow Wagtail, Whitethroat and a few Common Gull passing over head.

Wheatear: As we approached the fields near the horse paddocks, on the hill. Paul and I spotted at least 10 Wheatear bouncing around. This was the highlight as it was a little unexpected.

We then had a call saying that a Black Tern had made an appearance down the road at Eccleston Mere so me and Paul raced over but had no luck although we did have some great fly-buy views of the Kingfisher there.


I was very impressed with Billinge Hill and St Helens in general and will be making an effort to bird that area now that I am a local Wigan lad.

27/04/2012 Warrington Hospital

Pied Wagtail: Dawn took this video when she was at work for me, not an unusual bird, not exhibiting any unusual behaviour, but still a very nice bird for my Blog thanks Dawn.

It was taken in the Warrington Hospital car park, hopefully this wont be my last video upload on here many more welcome to be donated.