A good day in the county today with obvious movement of especially wildfowl, as follows:
Audenshaw: as mentioned in Paul's earlier post, 2 Red-breasted Mergansers and of course not to mention the Rock Pipit. That the Mergansers flew off may become important (see Hollingworth Lake below).
Hollingworth Lake: a pair of Red-breasted Mergansers, 21 Wigeon, female Mandarin and 3 Kittiwakes, unfortunately all moved on by boats. Could these Mergansers have been the Audenshaw birds? Can one of the Rochdale guys let us know what time they were seen, if they were very early morning (likely?) then they must be different birds (bird info per David Winnard)
Ashworth Moor Reservoir: 5 Wigeon and 4 Kittiwakes, although the Kittiwakes flew off (bird info. via David Winnard)
Pennington Flash: 21 Wigeon (the Hollingworth birds????), a female Common Scoter, plus 3 Mealy Redpolls at the western end of the Flash. Take the path from the western car park to the shore of the Flash and the birds were in trees immediately lining the shore, although they were very flightly and flew into the willows and alders inbetween the Flash and the car park. I also had another Redpoll fly calling over the Flash from the southern side into this same area but was unable to identify which species of Redpoll it was as there are often Lessers in the area, although saying that, this is atleast the third consecutive year I have had Mealy Redpolls in the same location at Pennington at this time of year (and oten into April)
Also, another single male Red-breasted Merganser was at a private site in the county this am.
