29th January 2012 - London Wetland Centre

This was the first trip of the year to the London Wetland Centre for us, which was unusual as we meant to head there earlier in the year - on the 1st!  It's one of our favourite haunts and we got a solid list, with one new bird for the year which was pretty much guaranteed there!  There was a very excitable Grey Heron we spotted flying over us about 8 times during the day, maybe he was making a survey of the site...  We looked for the resident Peregrine on Charing Cross Hospital and he was kindly perched there, which made the first for the year. 

As we only have a balcony (that despite having a bird feeder on it for 18 months, has seen no action), we took advantage of a trip up to Buckinghamshire to see Stuart's mummy to take an hour to take part in the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch.  She'd had Lesser Redpoll during the day, but of course they flew off the moment they spotted us driving away, so unfortunately that wasn't a lifer for the day!  45 minutes in, we'd only had visits from a Robin and a lovely Great Spotted Woodpecker.  It picked up a bit in the last quarter of an hour though, with Magpie, Blackbird, Coal Tit, Collared Dove, Blue Tit, Dunnock and Great Tit all popping by!

	WWT London	Big Garden Birdwatch
1	Grey Heron	Robin
2	Moorhen	Greater Spotted Woodpecker
3	Coot	Magpie
4	Mallard	Blackbird
5	Starling	Coal Tit
6	Parakeet	Collared Dove
7	Robin	Blue Tit
8	Lapwing	Dunnock
9	Jackdaw	Great Tit
10	Carrion Crow
11	Mute Swan
12	Shoveler
13	Tufted Duck
14	Black-headed Gull
15	Teal
16	Canada Goose
17	Cormorant
18	Great Tit
19	Blue Tit
20	Blackbird
21	Magpie
22	Long-tailed Tit
23	Peregrine
24	Water Rail
25	Pied Wagtail
26	Herring Gull
27	Lesser Black-backed Gull
28	Wigeon
29	Greylag Goose
30	Gadwall
31	Pintail
32	Shelduck
33	Great Crested Grebe
34	Chaffinch

My year list for 2012 comes to 87.