Written a week later because I've been caught up with stuff.

It is so wet, and the weather forecast is for more wet more of the time. When I was young this wasn't an issue. I'd throw on some shorts (because my skin is waterproof), and head out in all weathers. Now not so much. I'm really, really struggling with my joints this winter and blaming it on the amount of time fixing the car but, as the other half points out, I've been getting worse each winter for the last 20 years. It's not a surprise. When I was 14 I was told I might need a wheelchair by the time I was 30 but then my arthritis decided to stop destroying my joints and let me get on with my life. It was so good that I rarely took even over the counter painkillers from the age of 16/17 when they started to impact my drinking until just before my 40th birthday. Since then I've had first Naproxen, then Tramadol and finally downgraded to Co-Codamol after the NHS decided that handing out strong opiates wasn't such a good idea so they gave me a different strong opiate (actually Codeine gives me a rush like Morphine (that I once had after a fracture) and Tramadol had no noticeable narcotic effects on me other than killing the pain, if addiction and abuse was the real issue then in my case staying on Tramadol would have probably been safer, I dunno, politics and spreadsheets). So the issue has always been there and have been getting worse for years and got so bad I need painkillers to sleep more than 10 years ago. In short it wasn't lying under the car in sub zero temps and a long period of damp weather even though that can't have helped.

Anyway, wet, too wet to go to to most places and anyway I wasn't sure the car wouldn't shred another aux belt after changing most of the stuff that connects to it so I went close, close enough that I rarely go there as a 'destination' it's one of those places I tack on a visit when I have an errand to do over that side of the city (I'm from the East Side (the more Black Country bit) of Wolverhampton and West Park is on, surprise, surprise, the West Side). This was my first visit since the middle of November (which is going to be a bit of a theme over the next couple of months I feel) and the park itself was very, very quiet, in the Autumn the trees were buzzing with life but this time the places I expected to see birds didn't really have them apart from the trees I expected to hold Goldcrests which did but they stayed well away from the cold wind deep in the dark nooks that still held their insect diet.

I was running Merlin and in the field notes I'm going to note where Merlin picked something up but my ears didn't, I think I wore my hearing aids this day but honestly I can't really remember. In terms of the songbirds I think I heard everything that Merlin picked up goldcrest, robin, great tit, blue tit, long-tailed tit, dunnock and treecreeper. I didn't spot the treecreeper but that's not a surprise it's was a very contrasty day and the trees looked black against the white sky.

As for the stuff on the water and their noisy corvid friends I spotted magpie, common gull, carrion crow, canada goose, coot, moorhen, jackdaw, black-headed gull, grey lag goose, rock dove and it's wood pigeon friend. It was with these birds Merlin threw a bit of a curveball it matched ring-billed gull (no chance) and greater white-fronted goose (very, very unlikely) a prime example of how you need common sense when it comes to using apps, at least Merlin points out that it's oddball suggestions are very unlikely to be found in an urban Black Country park unlike some apps :)

Field notes to be added later (currently on paper)