The Angry Birds Are Back!

It's been really nice to see some Greenfinches back in my neighbour's garden for the first time in many years. They've suffered a national decline due to disease but seem to be making a bit of a recovery this year as others have reported them too.

Greenfinch populations have plummeted by roughly 67% since the mid-2000s. This drastic decline is primarily driven by trichomonosis, a severe parasitic disease spread at contaminated garden bird feeders, which bumped the species to the UK Red List. This means they are under most threat of further population decline.

The advice is not to put out seeds and peanuts in feeders from May to October when the disease transmission peaks. Most birds, specially young ones, should be eating insects and berries during this time. And clean your feeders and tables regularly using a 5% bleach solution washing water containers and bird baths daily if possible.

If you're wondering about the title of this post, I've always thought that the Angry Birds computer game used Greenfinches as the model for their characters!

Cormorant on Scotman's Flash

This is my favourite photo from yesterday. I've done very little processing in this shot, it's just the way the light hit the water a that particular moment. The Cormorant is almost incidental. Worth viewing at full screen size, IMHO.  Here's a cropped version too. Which do you prefer?

Great Northern Diver at the Wigan Flashes

I finally caught up with this juvenile Great Northern Diver on Scotman's Flash in Wigan today. I started looking on the yacht club side of the flash before driving round to the canal side where I quickly found the bird. However I could only get a record shot as the light was poor and the bird was quite mobile. When the sun actually came out for a while I decided to stay for a few hours in the hope it might come closer, but it was always distant and eventually I lost it altogether.

Whilst I was waiting for the Diver to reappear I took a couple of shots of some feral birds on the canal. I don't care what anyone thinks about them, you can't deny the Canada Goose is a handsome beast! 

And the same goes for the drake Mallard, especially in good light. Such beautiful colours on a very common bird on our canals and inland waterways.  What a shame it isn't appreciated a little more.

Great-tailed Grackle in Speke, Liverpool

With recent reports of a long-staying Great-tailed Grackle hanging around in Liverpool, I decided to head out to Speke today to get myself another lifer.  After three hours of looking in all the reported spots, and in miserable damp, dark, drizzly weather, I still hadn't found it until I was joined by some other birders, one of whom eventually spotted it feeding in the distance though a fence bordering the nearby industrial estate. 

There was no chance of even a record shot here, and there was no access to the industrial estate. After waiting for over four hours with only a couple of brief and distant glimpses of this bird, I eventually settled on just waiting for it to come back to one of its favoured roost sites.

By now it was 4:30pm and the light was fading fast with accompanying drizzle, so I had to ramp the ISO up high to be able to see anything among the branches. It eventually returned at 4:38pm with a couple of Magpies and settled here for about two minutes, calling a couple of times before flying away to its second roost site. Five minutes later and I would have set off back across the field for home and missed it.

I'd liked to have approached a bit closer, but there were other people present and so I didn't. We had a nice craic during the afternoon so all in all a good result, despite the miserable weather.

I was quite disappointed to find out later that although the BOU has classified this as a Category E bird, it does not form part of the British List.  This is because it's not a natural vagrant, but most likely human-assisted, having probably come in on a boat via the Liverpool Docks.  

It's only the third ever record of this species in the UK, the first being in Pembrokeshire in 2023 and the second being seen currently in Hampshire. I'm told that the exact species isn't really known with a DNA sample as it ever similar to the Boat-tailed Grackle, one of which has also been seen on the south coast. Still a lifer for me though and my first of 2026!

Snow Goose on the Marine Lake in Southport

A distant record shot of the Greater Snow Goose roosting with the Greylags on the marine lake at Southport yesterday.  It spent a lot of time sleeping on the opposite side of the lake, so I couldn't get any close shots.

There's a lot of discussion about whether this bird is truly wild or a feral escape. Apparently it has come in with the Pink-footed Geese in the autumns of 2024 and 2025. Although of unknown origin, one very experienced birder asked me how many Greater Snow Geese have ever been in UK collections and of course neither he or I had ever heard of any. So there's a good chance it may be truly wild.

The low, bright sunlight was very harsh and made photographing such a white bird very difficult, so I may try again if it's still around in a couple of weeks, hopefully on the main RSPB Marshside reserve.