And that's it for another year

Christmas is over and hopefully so is the stress. The weather, as well as my Mother getting taken into hospital with pneumonia just before Christmas,  together with the lousy weather resulted in a very poor end to the year. It was also very sad to learn that a local birder, Brian Unwin, died two days ago after a long fight with cancer. I have known him for a very long time including finding the county's only Collared Pratincole together,  me seeing my first Bonaparte's Gull  following a message left by him  of a 'Napoleon Gull' at Teesside and working together on the local Newspaper.

But hopefully things will get better, tomorrow is another year and hopefully a good one for natural history observations here at Waldridge. The plan is to be up early in the morning, walk down to the riverside, check along the river and then the Chester Dene and Hermitage Woods, walking over the back of Plawsworth to the south end of Felledge Wood, over the Fell, checking the Tribley farm ponds, back through the Cong Burn Woods and the village then South Burn Wood and home.

So the Waldridge lists finished at -

Flowering plants    339
Birds            106
Moths            246
Butterflies        20
Dragonflies        8
Hoverflies        14
Mammals            10
Bumblebees        6
Fungi            13

Plus I scraped together 31 species of plant in flower in December.

Tomorrow - its start again

Collared Dove on the bird table  

The only things of note the last few days were a dark Common Buzzard seen on 27th by the A1(M) Chester slip road and regular visits by a pair of Collared Dove to the bird table.