Less and Less and Less Spotted Woodpeckers

I was leading the York Bird Club field outing down into Notts today starting at Rufford CP hoping for Lesser Peckers, the first two car loads got onto four Hawfinches on a tree by the car park shortly after arriving unfortunately they flew off before the third car got there and despite extensive searching they couldn’t be relocated nor did we find any Lesser Peckers, in fact we felt lucky to get a pair of Great Spots then again the weather was against us really, it was extremely cold with frequent snow showers through the morning. We reverted to Plan B and headed off to the Sherwood Forest Visitor Centre, another site for Lesser Peckers but again there was no sign although many of the more common woodland species performed well and the Major Oak has stood another year. After lunch we moved on to Budby Common but with the onset of another snow shower it wasn’t looking good however as the shower passed we found a little feeding flock of passerines including a pair of Stonechats and a Green Woodpecker, mid afternoon it started to brighten up a bit so we decided to check out Welbeck, a couple of Buzzards were flying around but the wind chill wasn’t conclusive to standing about watching Raptors so we soon headed down into Clumber Park where we ended the day with a walk by the Lake, not the best trip to the Clumber area I've ever led but the weather wasn't particularly good, nevertheless the two specialities of this trip are proving ever more difficult to connect with each year.

Hiding again, one day I'll get a decent shot of one