I'm back from my holiday and so this morning I went on a run in order to check out the state of the patch. When I'd left things had all still been frozen over but of course now the floods are fully restored to their proper state and the birds were of course back again in reasonable numbers. As well as the usual wigeon, teal and shoveler there were half a dozen PINTAIL and waders were well represented with 2 RUFF, 4 REDSHANK and 3 DUNLIN as well as forty odd golden plover. I don't know whether larger plover numbers have been coming in to roost this week but before the big freeze we were getting 800+ goldies at roost time. A soaring sparrowhawk over Wolvercote was accompanied by common buzzard, the latter being a surprisingly late year tick for the patch. I also saw a distant goose species flying around over Wolvercote before heading off to land in the fields by the river to the North of Godstow Bridge. It was comparatively small looking and didn't look like a greylag (not having the grey wings of that species) but I couldn't tell any more than that.
I like a nice bit of ruff
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