Bumped into local birders Mathew Meehan and Alex Bevan [not literally!]. Matt informed me that the Hawfinches were still around [now c.10 birds]. After a few minutes standing in the rain, 3 suddenly appeared in the tree tops, then dropped out of sight, then 5 more appeared and sat in the top twigs of a tall tree. I managed to fire off a few record shots. They were at the top of 40-50ft high trees and about 100 – 200m distant, and against a light sky. So 2 ‘as taken’ shots below and 2 mega crops from effectvely the same shots. Camera was at max Zoom [600mm DSLR equiv]. One crop shows a bird just as it dropped off its perch, showing the very distinctive broad white wing bars. The cropped perched in the open shot shows the charateristic short tail with a white terminal band. Apologies to those familiar but if you’ve not seen one before these are features to look out for if and when you get the chance. Also present on W lake were a pair of Wigeon, a pair of Gadwall and 2 pairs of Shoveler. Very thin sprinkling of snow.