Cold!

Pancakes, anyone? The sea is starting to freeze at Båstad, wrecking my hopes of finding a kingfisher in the harbour.

Harbour slush patterns, no open water in the harbour today, will have to look for kingfisher elsewhere but hope that they have the good sense to head south. We have negative temperatures forecast for the next ten days at least and more snow on the way.

Nipped out for a morning's birding and headed first to Båstad to see what was going on there. Båstad is not a bad winter bird location and produced some good birds today although visibility offshore was hampered by 'heat-haze'. At least 28 whooper swans noted, two long-tailed ducks and a flock of at least 150 velvet scoter (with perhaps many more further out). Flying about were seven redpoll and a massive flock of 15 bullfinches.

Next stop was Torekov rev, pretty quiet here but dug out two sleeping purple sandpipers and found a small number of both rock and meadow pipit (why are they so scarce this winter?). The best bird was a monstrous adult goshawk flushed from the bushes near the point.

Last stop of the day and just before I started to get really cold was Ripagården. I only got as far as the field sown for finches and buntings, because I was greeted with a flock of 250 yellowhammers near the road there. Last year this flock produced Lapland bunting so I parked up (getting close views of a male hen harrier and offering cover for a successful hunting sparrowhawk) and patiently inserted myself into the flock. The big surprise was a good number of redpoll (40) and I spent most of my time looking through these. Most redpolls encountered so far this year have been very flighty and hyperactive, an consequently difficult to pin down and look at. In the sturdy presence of so many yellowhammers they behaved themselves and I was able to get down to the baffling task of searching for Arctic redpolls. There was one excellent candidate - a male - and one (perhaps two) first-winter 'types'. I will try and get photos this weekend if I can. Also in the flock a single skylark, a handful of brambling and chaffinch and 2-3 reed buntings.

Driving home the snow made searching out grey partridges much easier than normal and I found a covey of eight near Grevie.