stocksbridge on saturday

spent all night hoping and praying that the pond would be frozen so that i would be in with a chance of seeing a water rail. oh i was thrilled when the pond was frozen but nevertheless there were still no water rails. even so we still saw lots of nice things:
plenty of reed buntings on the feeders
the best view of a long tailed tit ever, three in total
moorhens around the feeders
various garden birds-blue tit, great tit, blackbird, robin, wren etc
3 mallards sliding around on the ice
plenty of gulls on the ice
a grey heron
also this phesant which was waddling around. this bird made a real racket when a cat walking around the reserve spooked it.

however the best thing seen today must have been the foxes. at around 10.15 the gulls all suddenly took off and i thought there must be some kind of predator. i looked around the skies but saw nothing then on the beach was sat a fox looking hungrily at the gulls. there were some splendid views and then as that one slunked off a second appeared and they walked throught the brush together. they brought out a grey heron and i thought they may be hunting it but if they were they were being very slow about it and never caught it.