Brambling and Siskin

My first Brambling of the new year was in the crowd of finches on our feeders this morning. No photo I'm afraid as I've loaned my camera to a friend. There's about 6 or 7 inches of snow here in deepest West Yorkshire and it's still snowing.

There was about 6 or 7 inches of snow and it was still snowing this afternoon when I set off to walk over to Lee Dam to see if there was anything on the water, as although it's still mostly frozen, it was the annual New Year Swim yesterday so they broke the ice for people to be able to swim out far enough to make it a decent race to retrieve the wooden cup that that is the trophy. There wasn't anything on the water at all, not even a Mallard.

I found my 8 year old Fuji digital camera so I took that with me -

A Great Spotted Woodpecker was calling in Shaw Wood and 2 Mistle Thrushes were in Lumbutts churchyard, but best of all were 14 Siskin in the catkins at Lee Dam, which is my best count for Siskin at this site. I took a few photos but the snow was coming straight onto the lens, plus I couldn't remember how to change the settings to compensate for the birds being back-lit and silhouetted against the light as I haven't used this camera for ages. Definite user error!