Wanderly Wigeon

Irish frogs are a bit dim.

Cycling around the patch yesterday afternoon I almost rode through a gelatinous mass of frogspawn overflowing from a tiny puddle in the middle of the road. Stoopid frogs!

Frogspawn in the same ditch -- this clump spotted on 09 January

 I shovelled as much as I could into the adjacent ditch where there was lots more frogspawn and where some of my rescued spawn will hopefully hatch to join the perilous and oft-times blatantly cannibalistic world that is froggy kindergarten. Good luck to them.

Fieldfare and redwing still rife around the patch, gorging on ivy berries it looked like. Crawling with goldcrests and coal tits too....

None of which matters, because they're already ticked.

What wasn't already ticked was the drake wigeon pootling about on the far side of the lake, soon joined by a female paddling out of the reeds. Full fat patch tick -- the second in a week. RESULT! Added to the flyover curlew just as darkness fell a few nights back that takes me to 55 for the year or 66.67%, if you're counting.