Slav Grebe - Southport Marine Lake, Lancs, 15th Nov 2005.

A scarce visitor to Lancs (+ North Mersyside, where technically this bird was), this little cracker showed well at the southern end of Southport Marine Lake. This is only the 2nd time I've seen this species in the county, the first being 12 years ago at Dean Clough Reservoir, Gt. Harwood.

North Wales (Green Heron & Black Scoter) - 13th Nov 2005.

Thankfully after a frustrating week at work, the superb Green Heron remained at Red Wharf Bay, Anglesey, long enough for me to twitch it. What a stunner, the bird showed superbly on+off in creeks and on top of a relatively narrow strip of saltmarsh. One of my birds of the year and no mistake! Also, seen at this lovely location was a Little Egret and numerous Wigeon. A male Cettis Warbler present in the scrub just inland of the saltmarsh unfortunately didn't make its presence known whilst at the site. It had been singing prior to our arrival.

Next stop was to do some birding around Holyhead Harbour, which produced an excellent 1stw Great Nortthern Diver and 3 Black Guillemot. 5 Little Egret were seen at Penrhos.

Finally, our 2nd attempt of the day for the drake Black Scoter was rewarded with distant, but perfectly adequate scope views of the bird at low tide from the A55 roadbirdge. The videograb above was obtained on c400x magnification!