Christmas Eve was a beautifully sunny day. A large grey-goose influx was underway nationally and a message on our local birding WhatsApp group reported the presence of Tundra Bean and Russian White-fronted Geese among a flock of Whooper Swans east of Peterborough. Inspired by this news, I decided to divert the fen way home from Bourne after meeting a friend for an afternoon drink.

On this cold midwinter afternoon, the sun was already sinking towards the horizon as I crossed the River Glen at Tongue End. Happily, before me in fields to the south, was a sizeable flock of swans – exactly what I was hoping for! A quick scan with the bins revealed a handful of grey geese among them and I knew my luck was in. Three Tundra Bean and a couple of Russian White-fronted Geese felt like a very pleasing result for some off-the-cuff roadside birding.

Driving closer, and after enjoying some decent views of the geese, I decided to scan the Whoopers in the hope that I might pick up my first Bewick's Swans of the winter. What I did not bet on seeing halfway through the flock was the unmistakable head of a white-morph Snow Goose poking out from behind a mass of swans! 'Hang on a minute,' I thought. 'Surely not?'

I took my eye away from the scope, collected my thoughts for a couple of seconds and looked back down the eyepiece. Yep, there really was a Snow Goose standing there with its head still raised, ogling back at me. The obligatory expletives were uttered under my breath before I figured out the next move. Clearly, getting photos was a priority, but it felt important to check that it wasn't simply some farmyard-style imposter. After a bit of manoeuvring, both from me and the swans, I had seen the entirety of the bird and confirmed that black existed where black was meant to be and that the legs were seemingly unringed.

Snow Goose is a species that I have long flirted with the idea of seeing among local Whooper Swans, but it always felt more of a pipe dream than a realistic possibility – probably because the last record in The Fens was as long ago as 1997. However, after one arrived with Whoopers in Shetland back in October, it felt on the cards somewhere this winter. I'd even said to my colleague Sam Viles that the Shetland bird would end up in The Fens this winter. So, perhaps I shouldn't have been all that shocked to see it loitering in South Lincolnshire.

As for the bird's origin, my suspicion is that it arrived in The Fens with Whoopers at some point in the autumn (it was last seen in Shetland on 14 October) and has been lurking here ever since. Very few people bother looking at the local swan flocks with much thoroughness and it could easily have been overlooked in the intervening weeks. The bird could be hard enough to see even when we knew it was there! It just so happens that its discovery coincided with the influx of continental geese; given the Snow showed little interest in the grey geese and was clearly wedded to the Whoopers, it seems highly likely that it has been hanging out with the swans for some time.

Cowbit Wash continues to produce the goods. As well as a second Temminck's Stint on 18 May (there was also one on 15th) and a pristine, brick-red Curlew Sandpiper (which I sadly missed), this lovely breeding-plumaged Little Stint gave some excellent views. This trio of calidrids is typically very scarce in the Peterborough area and by no means guaranteed each year, so to have all three show up on the same day is testament to the quality of the habitat at Cowbit.

Cowbit is currently full of breeding birds and so it is not responsible to try and get close to passage waders here in most situations, with the majority of individuals feeding close to nests of sensitive species. So, it was a happy break from the norm when the Little Stint moved to a small flood well away from the breeding birds and allowed for a safe approach. I was very pleased with this photo opportunity; I suspect I might not get anything as good of a spring Little Stint again locally.

It's also important to pay tribute to the humble Dunlin! After a peak of almost 200 birds in early May, numbers rapidly dropped off towards the middle of the month with day maxima of 20-30 individuals (but often no more than a handful).

The extensive flooding at Cowbit Wash has persisted into the spring and the pumping of remnant floodwater has been postponed while Avocets and other Schedule 1 breeding birds raise young on the site. By late April, Dunlin numbers had begun to build up again after a rapid drop-off in the huge wintering flock during March and early April.

Anticipation was high among local birders of a rare wader at the time and although a nationally scarce/rare species didn't come, the Purple Sandpiper that dropped in during abject conditions on 28th was a local tick for pretty much everyone who came to see it, with only historical records in the Peterborough recording area. When I first picked this bird up in flight, I assumed it was going to be a Turnstone, but then it landed and looked like a large, dark and portly Dunlin at extreme distance and through the rain. Eventually it came a bit closer and the ID was confirmed.

​Later that day, I was treated to some stunning views of the bird, which was typically fearless. It was truly surreal to see this species frequenting a grassy field margin in the middle of the Lincolnshire fens.

Extremely high rainfall throughout the early winter period culminated in the River Welland exceptionally bursting its banks in two places between Deeping and Spalding in early January, flooding hundreds of acres of historical washland that have not been flooded in decades. Not good news for local farmers, but it has been superb for birding, attracting thousands of waterbirds to feed in fields that are normally pretty dry and birdless.

Among the huge numbers of commoner species have been some exciting scarcities. A female Long-tailed Duck appeared at Cowbit Wash within a couple of days of it flooding, and there has been a steady build-up of Ruddy Turnstones there as well (27 the most recent high, an exceptional total for an inland site). But the rarest bird so far has been the Velvet Scoter that I found rather fortuitously on the Welland on 27 January. As I poked my head over the floodbank near Cradge Farm, hands full of tripod, phone and hat, I flushed an interesting brown duck with some Mallard that promptly took off and revealed white secondaries. For a moment it looked as it was departing, but it came back down on the river a little bit further downstream. It's been quite skittish, but lingered into early February and gave local birders a welcome area tick. The last PBC record was at Bainton from 13-19 November 1983, so it had been a while.

I always make a point of trying to keep an eye on flocks of European Golden Plovers when they begin to form on my local Lincolnshire fens (usually at the end of September, but sometimes later), for they are an often-underappreciated source of scarce finds. Coming across a good bird among them can be both challenging but also very rewarding.

After a Pacific Golden Plover in November 2021, the best I could muster in 2022 was a juvenile Grey Plover. Amazingly, despite the many thousands of golden plovers that gather in the Peterborough area each autumn, there had not been a local record of American Golden Plover since a juvenile that I found at Etton-Maxey Pits in October 2007. It seems beyond comprehension that there hasn't been one in Peterborough for 16 years and I would imagine in reality it's a near-annual visitor to the area rather than a once-in-a-decade vagrant.

​I was hoping that I might be able to end the long wait for another AGP this autumn, but didn't expect it to happen at only my second attempt. After finding a flock of about 500 birds along Deeping High Bank on 28th, I returned on 29th and fairly quickly picked up a good candidate for an adult AGP on the 'wrong' side of the river, into the sun. Despite the awful light and a distance of 1km, plus the bird nestled in a roosting group of Euros, the extensively black-speckled underparts and rather swarthy-looking upperparts looked good, but I couldn't be sure without better views.

Fortunately, the flock soon took flight and relocated to the west side of the river, landing in a field close to where I was parked. The light was perfect on the birds and the AGP was soon located. Identification was now straightforward, for it was feeding unobscured alongside Euros in beautiful morning sunshine and stuck out like a sore thumb as being cold and greyish, retaining a strong, white supercilium, as well as having a dark cap and dark, blackish-grey upperparts.

​After some excellent views, I was joined by Paul Bolton shortly before the birds took flight again. We enjoyed some excellent views of the AGP as it whirled around in the sky above us among the flock, giving us great opportunities to appreciate just how dark it could look compared to the gleaming white of the EGPs.

John Rimes and his son, plus a few other birders, then arrived, but the AGP became tricky. Our last views of it were with the Northern Lapwing flock back on the opposite side of the river, again at considerable distance and in difficult light. Curiously, it had separated from the EGPs at this point. After flying off around 11:20, it wasn't seen again.

Like many birders of my generation, Aquatic Warbler has been a tricky bird to catch up with in Britain. Over the past couple of decades, there have been precious few truly gettable examples of this endangered warbler turning up here. There was one in Kent in August 2006 that a lot of people ticked, but I was away on a family holiday. Since then, there have been a few semi-twitchable birds that others have seen, but for whatever reason I'd been unable (or unwilling) to go – including for the Suffolk bird only a few weeks ago.

I have been moving house this week, so naturally I was a little galled when a very accessible Aquatic Warbler turned up at Beeding Brooks in West Sussex. By the third day its continued presence had eaten away at me too much and it felt like an opportunity I couldn't turn down, so I planned a rare twitch for what was a world lifer. In the end, things worked out well and the bird gave much better views than I had imagined, often to within 5 metres but always at least partially obscured. Photo opportunities were limited because of that, but that didn't matter as it was a beautiful bird that was very entertaining to simply watch with binoculars as it crept unobtrusively and Locustella-like through the long grass.

Friday 18 August proved to be opening day of the best autumn passage of Black Terns in Britain for a good few years. In fact, after two blank autumns locally in 2020 and 2021, then just a single adult in September 2022, it was really nice to see a flock linger throughout the day, gradually increasing to a peak of 11 birds. Most were moulting adults, but among them were four juveniles – these were what I focused on with the camera.

As is often the case on 'Black Tern days', the light wasn't great, but it was interesting to see how an overcast sky could nonetheless throw up a variety of light conditions as both darker clouds and brighter patches passed by overhead. A selection of images below.

I hadn't been to Cromer in late summer for a couple of years, so went over for the afternoon to meet Rich Bonser and see how many Caspian Gulls we could tally up.

As I have written before, the 'Cromer Experience' has to be seen to be believed, even in this contemporary age where Caspian Gull is more expected visitor than desired scarcity in Britain. Despite this species' westward spread and increasing numbers, it is still slightly surreal seeing so many birds up closer on the beach here. True to form, one of the first gulls seen during my visit on 4 August was a juv Casp, and five more birds followed. Below is a series of photos taken during an enjoyable few hours.

It's been a lean few years for Black Tern passage, with my patch at Baston averaging a couple of records per spring since I moved back to the area in 2020.

And 2023 was shaping up to be the leanest of all, until there was a sudden, strong push of birds through the usual overland flyways in the final few days of May. On 31st, no fewer than 10 congregated at Wader Pit, with numbers gradually swelling through the afternoon after the first couple of birds arrived at lunchtime.

This is the highest count of the species I have had here for many years and it was a joy to watch them dancing together over the water-crowfoot, executing delightful aerobatics and picking insects from the water surface.

Unlike the past few years, the first half of spring has been extremely wet. Unfortunately, at times, it has been really quite chilly as well and migration has been deathly quiet, even non-existent, for extended spells.

This all changed on 18 April when a brisk north-easterly wind and clear skies – classic conditions for the date – suddenly saw Bar-tailed Godwit passage get going. Over the following few days I had at least 22 birds pass through at Baston Wader Pit.

The 19th was the best day of April at Baston. A vigil from dawn saw 10 Bar-tailed Godwits move through in small groups, 14 Little Gulls (including a vocal flock of nine in the early morning sunshine), Arctic Tern and Spotted Redshank. The last bird hung around for a week in total, commuting between the pits and Baston Fen and having noticeably advanced in moult by the time it left.

Despite this excitement, and a lovely Grey Plover the following morning, things died down again pretty quickly and, on the whole, it had to be said that April was a bit of a disappointment in the Deepings area. This was compounded by the record-breaking flocks of Kittiwakes and, later, Little Gulls in the Trent Valley – only around 40 km to the north-west. But that's just the way it goes, sometimes!

Passerine migration didn't ever really get flowing, either. There were a few days where Northern Wheatears seemed to be moving in decent numbers, but it was a blank month for Whinchat and Ring Ouzel locally and the only Common Redstart I could find was a fortuitous encounter with a male in roadside brambles at Bourne South Fen, which happened to be calling as I drove past with the window down on my way to work!

One of the highlights of the month was a group of three Black-necked Grebes which spent a few days moving around sites near Peterborough. Despite plenty of vocalising and display, they moved off again at the end of the month and no breeding attempt was forthcoming.