Departed at 8am and headed down the A1, and the first good birds were found at Welwyn Garden City. Recently a Ring Necked Parakeet roost at Stanborough has been building and peaking at over 500 birds, but even so, it was a nice surprise when ten or so flew low over the car.
We reached Wishmoor Bottom near Camberly an hour later and joined a steady stream of birders, dog walkers and those out for a New Year stroll. Unfortunately it remained dull, damp and cool all morning, and birds seemed a bit thin on the ground
Following a map and advice from a local dog walker and a returning (successful) , Colin and I ended up a little way off from the rest of the birders overlooking the shallow valley where the Parrot Crossbills have tended to be seen. We had missed a mixed flock of 16 Common and Parrot Crossbills by about twenty minutes and the information suggested that they had been seen flying over the ride where we were situated. A long wait of an hour produced a few birds, including Nuthatch and Redpolls, some Magpies and a Jay. Unfortunately our location was not good for Dartford Warbler (everyone on the other side of the valley seemed to have seen some). We did get a couple of fly over crossbills-the first a deep sounding bird wasn't seen but appeared to be calling from over the high ridge behind and east of us. We assumed Parrot. The second flew north over our heads and was clearly a Common. We headed off following it but bumped into a couple of birders who hadn't heard it. Believing it to be still around we returned to our lookout spot and the couple moved south stopping by some birches where I noticed them pointing cameras.
Approaching them I could see at least two Crossbills in the scope which dropped to the ground and then flew down to a puddle with some other birds. We fired off some shots and I thought one looked rather chunky in the scope, but they then flew off into some pines and were lost to view.
We got closer and realised that there were a number of Crossbills feeding in the pines. No idea how many were in there as they were very hard to see most of the time, but I suspect that ten would be about right. The scope views I had suggested that all were Common and the other three (later four agreed). Not entirely sure about the following male bird though.
The lighting was awful and deteriorating all the time , so the photos weren't all that great.
We left the others around 11am, pointed a couple of others we encountered in their direction and headed back to Herfordshire.
Arrived at Bramfield just after 1pm and joined four others just south of the church scoping the trees in the vicarage garden where one Hawfinch was sitting in the top of one of the trees. Didn't stay all that long as rain arrived.
Shortly after we reached Wishmore, Twitter alerted me to the fact that Mike Illet had seen three Parrot Crossbills at Broxbourne-the first report since I was there Christmas Eve so we decide to get there and hope the birds would come into roost. Met Ade Hall and Jane Free leaving in torrential rain that quickly cleared-they had been on site for much of the day without success, so we went down to the cross track with a few others and waited. It got sunnier, but colder and apart from a Siskin we didn't see a great deal. Stuck it out until just after three and we all decided to call it a day. Laurence Drummond later reported a Siskin and a Brambling as the only birds coming in to roost.
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