Hooray, the Waxwings are Back!

Waxwings have been appearing all over Greater Manchester and indeed the rest of the country this month and so this was to be my first trip out for some time. I decided to go for the Bolton birds as these were being updated the most frequently on the internet, but I could have gone locally to Wigan, Salford and Warrington.

I've spent most of the last month digging out a draining ditch and footings for a small retaining wall in my back garden. I've been knee-deep in horrible, sticky mud and clay throughout this time which has made the going very tough, especially I filled an 8-ton skip with the stuff and there was still more. I shifted everything by hand in a wheelbarrow and worse still, it all had to go through my house as it's  link-detached with no way around it. There was mud everywhere just before Christmas.

These wonderfully photogenic birds don't appear in the UK every year, so when the are about photographers tend to fill their boots, so to speak.