Three visits to the Corse this past week, Saturday for WEBS, including to the upstream section below Castlemartin Church. Biggest surprise was that the flock of 50+ stock doves on the Gupton fields, reported by Bob on 5 December following our winter farmland bird count, is still present, I saw them on Thursday and yesterday. They even perched briefly on the wires, but are extremely wary. Plenty of linnets still at Gupton around the farmyard, but in a mobile mixed flock with chaffinch and goldfinch making it impossible to tell how many of each - roughly 1000 birds in the ratio 70:20:10. I looked for greenfinch and brambling but couldn't find any. The sparrowhawk(s) put in regular appearances.
Mainly linnets
Down on the Corse the usual marsh harrier was making brief flights. Alan Merrett suggested there may be two. Around 80 teal, 50 shoveler, 4 mallard and a couple of female wigeon represented a good duck count, but the huge flocks of lapwing and golden plover in the upstream section had moved on as the water levels have dropped. There were still around 200 lapwing among the sheep in the root crop on the Kilpaison side. Two greylags dropped in noisily near they hide - they could well be a breeding pair, there's been a pair around all summer for the last couple of years but I haven't established breeding.