From storming to struggling

After my storming start. I've been struggling to get new birds for my Chester-le-Street year list since. The fell produced a couple of new birds in the way of Skylark and Green Woodpecker but that's all. The latter species has been much scarcer the past few years as I have commented on before. From 7 pair here about 10 years ago, it looks like they are down to 2 pair now. In fact I failed to get them on my 1Km square list last year.

Apart from that it's been a couple of visits to the riverside and Houghton Gate Pond. I've just come back from the latter where there's a stack of birds but nothing new. There were 380 Grey Lag Geese, 400+ Curlew, a Black-tailed Godwit, 60 Lapwing, 100 (counted) Wigeon, a Shelduck, 2 Shoveler, 35 Teal, 55 Wood Pigeon and 7 Tree Sparrow.

So the year list stands at 81.