Sunday February 7

With Lyn still requiring plenty of hands-on care, I only managed a couple of hours this morning. Dave arrived before me, and as agreed, had gone on a circuit of the patch on his own.

Last night I received an interesting email from a birder called Dan Watson. He had evidently read my recent blogs about Redpolls and also Neil Duggan's blog "Out 4 a duck" which also shows images of them, and was interested in a pale Redpoll shown in both blogs. He felt that the bird showed several of the features of Coues's Arctic Redpoll, and was wondering whether I had any notes or additional photographs. One point he made was that Coues's can be pretty small, something I hadn't realised.

Unfortunately my note-taking was non-existent because I was concentrating on recording it with photographs. This is pretty bad birding, but in my defence I would say that without any photos I would probably not have recorded sufficient detail to identify the bird anyway. I sent him what I could.

Realising that in order to stand any chance of providing a convincing record of the Redpoll I would need to see its rump well, I decided to concentrate my efforts on the Redpoll flock once more. There were about 80 birds present but neither I nor Dave, when he joined me, was able to see a white rump on the birds in the field.

On his circuit Dave had seen a flock of at least 500 Starlings, plus two Shovelers and 45 Teal.

I suspect the mystery Redpoll has gone, but I will keep looking just in case.

The one that got away ?