The Manchester Birder

  So there went November, the tumbling of months seeming to increase in velocity as winter dark grips every birding day in a vice of time pressure.  Birding this last few weeks has been really enjoyable - I've always been one for winter birding, preferring wildfowl to warblers, and cold walks interspersed with open fire stone walled pubs to summer heat and beer gardens.  There has been something of an anti-climatic feel to the Big Year, though November actually outperformed October, and it's been good to free myself from thinking about birding in the context of the framework of the 300.   Local birding is interesting in winter - summer is very quiet here, and though we do have autumn migration it's a case of seeing what flies over, more noticing what's leaving, so winter and spring are the seasons for Manchester wildlife.  The knowledge that there is the daily opportunity to see gorgeous Short-eared Owls within 5 miles of home provides a sort of birding rea...