Rare Bird Alert weekly round-up: 16 - 22 Jan 2013

The week's highlights:
Berkshire’s two American Buff-bellied Pipits stay for another week
Ireland double bill of American Coot and Northern Harrier stay put too

After last week’s initial snowy weather starters, the significant “main course” falls across many parts of the country this week, coupled with generally below zero temperatures meant that some of the allure of the beautiful white-clad scenery began to lose its appeal.
Getting to work proved tough for some, getting away from various airports was harder still and the grim avalanche in the Scottish mountains put everything else in to some perspective.
There was very little let up as the weekend came and went, a widespread dump of a good four to six inches across many areas of the southeast, through East Anglia, the Midlands and the North (up to a foot was on the ground in Northumberland by Monday) and with some chilly winds blowing across the North Sea, it really wasn’t very pleasant.

Headline birds
Still, good weather or bad weather, there were always going to be hardy souls out in the field and despite the lack (again) of any significant hard weather movements there were new birds being found, though at the top end of the rare scale, it was very much a case of “as you were”.

In Berkshire, the two American Buff-bellied Pipits continued to share their time between the Queen Mother Reservoir and puddles near Kingsmead Quarry to 20th, with at least one still present in the snow on 21st, with both present and correct again as the week concluded.
Ireland’s best birds remained the American Coot, still at Murlach, near Ballyconnelly (Co. Galway) to 19th at least and the juvenile female Northern Harrier at Tacumshin (Co. Wexford) to 20th.

.and, err, that was that