Acton Burnell yielded plenty of woodland birds, Goldcrest, Nuthatch and Treecreeper in particular. A Common Buzzard at Cressage - looking like he'd found a Turkey or two?....
Venus Pool had 'common' birds aplenty including 36 Tufted Ducks, the highest count for me recently. Plenty of 'Christmas' family squabbles amongst the Greylags too! A dapper male Pintail too.
Brief stop at Chelmarsh which was 'back to normal'. Paul King was there, hoping for lightning to strike twice (it hadn't when I left). A few Siskins around including this nice male but nothing else of note, so off to Priorslee (via Dudmaston - which was 'Smewless')
Priorslee was pretty quiet on the Gull front so with Chasewater 30 minutes aways and recent reports of a male Smew, I decided to give this a go. Time was short and I didn't have enough of it to walk to the North bank (Smew sadly not found) but I did find the two Great Northern Divers still in Fly bay. One of them appeared to have some ? fishing line dangling out of it's bill - see bottom pic (also present in a few other shots of the same bird). A couple of Goosanders kept them company for a short while, their departure signalled mine.....
