Atlasing SD75W

With a fine morning forecast it was time to do another tetrad in East Lancashire. I'd chosen an area north of Bolton-by-Bowland as the area hadn't been surveyed yet. I'd never birded here before but that's one of the reasons why I quite like this task - it just makes you look at areas that wouldn't get a second glance normally.

Things started off reasonably well in this rural, livestock-rearing neck of the woods with a reasonably sized flock of Redwings and a calling Green Woodpecker (something not often encountered in Lancashire generally). Though there was a frost over the ground, it hadn't penetrated the surface and the going was heavy.
One nice aspect to this tetrad was that Tosside beck flows through it but there were no Dippers on the three stretches I could get to. Nuthatches were much in evidence at a couple of places and I came accross a nice bracken covered bank that looks good for Whinchat in the summer.

On several occasions, single Siskins flew over but I got a flock of at least 15 just outside the tetrad in Grunsagill. there weren't many finches around but a small group of Chaffiches had a Brambling with them.
Surveys in the New Year should be a bit more interesting I think, especially if we get some hard weather moving in.

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