I did the Cors Caron WeBS count for January on Tuesday last week, a very enjoyable walk along the river and down the railway line, especially as I had to skip the December count due to high water levels all month (only the 2nd time I've had to miss a count in my 18 winters of doing them).
Highlights were 7 goosander, a nice big flock of lapwing, hearing a water rail (I stop for lunch in the bird hide and often hear one there) and good numbers of wigeon on Maesllyn itself.
Although Cors Caron doesn't hold any nationally or internationally significant bird populations in winter in terms of numbers, it does hold one of the largest non estuarine concentrations of water birds in mid Wales. And we are now in the 53rd count year, which is a very long count series for such a rural and isolated area. Few WeBS count sites can boast such a long and near continuous (only one missed year in the 1960s and another in the 1990s) run of data; those that can are more often coastal and close to larger centres of population. The longevity of the data set has allowed it to track changes such as the disappearance of white fronted geese as an inland wintering species in the 1960s.