Staying Close to Home

Finally following a resolution made some time ago, I got out to a couple of locations nearby recently.

Last Wednesday I did a double trip to Thornley Woods and the Far Pastures Reserve.

After wandering around a bit in search of some reported redwing, the hide at Thornley Woods was fairly quiet.

A few tits visited the feeders and I caught sight of a nuthatch and a treecreeper as well as this woodpecker, which was deemed worth a photograph since they don't come to the caged feeders I now use.

Female Woodpecker

At Far Pastures there was a bit more action and I was quite pleased to see a few teal and a family of gadwall, though I think teal is pretty much resident here.

Teal

Gadwall

The first bird I saw puzzled me a little as I took it to be a juvenile little grebe but could not see any parent birds. However it seems to be an adult in winter plumage.

Little Grebe

There was also a good deal of activity around the feeders at the car park.  I hung on for a while in fading light. just in case something memorable turned up.

Today I took a look at Stargate Pond and Beweshill Reserve which was pretty much a total failure as a bird watching trip but interesting in other ways.

I knew that Ryton Angling Club had a location in this area and sure enough there were four or five anglers trying their luck and with some success with the roach, quite impressive in temperatures of only 5C.

On talking to one of them it seems there is a good range of species present including tench and carp. If and when I start fishing again, this may well be where I go. 

It's also not a bad size and, as a former quarry, quite deep.

The positive view was endorsed by this cormorant, the only bird I saw apart from swans and a magpie. 

Cormorant

Sure enough a roach was being landed as I moved away.

My verdict on the venue was that it might be one for the summer.  

In particular the notice boards suggest that a good range of butterflies can be found there including dingy skipper.  Small copper would not surprise me either as they are certainly present at Ryton Meadows a mile or so away.  However I've never seen Stargate Pond mentioned in local reports on butterfly sightings.

I also spent some time on the other side of the main road trying in vain to find further ponds but did spot another marked wildlife area, which may well also be worth investigating.

Missed Opportunities

The last few days have been a series of near misses.

Last week I went looking for waxwings on a track near Killingworth and, for the second time this winter, found that I had arrived a day too late and the main flock and all the berries had disappeared.  So I decided to make a call at Gosforth Park where a bittern has been appearing.  

I managed to guess which hide it would be near and there were four of us waiting for it to poke its nose pout from the reeds.  Unfortunately it had decided not to do so until we had all disappeared, which one by one we duly did.  The only other noteworthy thing I saw was a little egret on the scrape

On Monday I took a trio to venue I hadn't previously heard of - Pow Hill Country Park near Derwent Water as there had been some crossbills sighted.  In fact there wasn't much doing apart from one female according to a twitcher, so I contented myself with some experimental photography of some mallards on the lake a couple of hundred yards away to compare different modes on the new camera. This was the declared winner:

Mallards

It was taken in bird mode.  The runner up in automatic mode was also perfectly acceptable, unlike the P mode which seems to over expose considerably.  I must be doing something wrong.

There was an area near the car park where woodland birds seemed to gather so I decided to check it out.  Prospects were initially dimmed by a bloke in a high vis jacket and leading two dogs plus wife, who decided to walk straight through the area I was surveying. 

When I went back a bit later something interesting happened.  Another family man turned up and starting stretching his hand out and the wee birds clearly knew he was offering bird food. Sure enough he soon had coal tits and chaffinches eating from his hand.  I know this can take place but had never seen it before.  It also became obvious that there was bird food on some of the old tree trunks in the same clearing and all the birds seemed to have little fear of people.

In terms of sightings, it was another period where my own garden produced more than my trips out.  Having not been seen for some time, both nuthatch and woodpecker turned up in the space of the couple of days.

I mentioned last time that a blue tit was feeding on the mahonia bush.  This has continued and early one morning I noticed a bird that wasn't a blue tit doing the same, though often in the depths of the bush.  I eventually caught a glimpse of a reddish head and thought it must be a redpoll.  On closer inspection though it proved to be an overwintering female blackcap, as had happened to or three years back.  I wonder if it was the same bird...

Female Blackcap

Better Late than Never

Thanks to some breaks in the otherwise depressing July weather, there have been outbursts of increased activity, particularly amongst the butterflies - at last I'm tempted to say.

For it was just five days ago that the commas made their first appearance and sightings of red admiral, large and green-veined white and small tortoiseshell became more regular.  Promising additions were fleeting appearances by holly blue and humming bird hawk moth.

Comma

Large White

Around the same time a female woodpecker appeared on the peanuts, closely followed by a male and the latter has visited daily ever since. 

Female Woodpecker

Male Woodpecker

I did the Big Butterfly Count yesterday and red admiral came out in the lead with nine sightings in fifteen minutes.

On Friday I led the Prudhoe U3A Naturewatch visit to Chopwell East Field, a recently declared nature reserve, uncertain what we might see.

In the event, it was a lot. There were dozens of meadow brown and small skipper as well as a good few ringlets, green-veined white, speckled wood, red carpet and both five and six spot burnets as well as a small copper, small tortoiseshell, red admiral and peacock. We also managed to observe all four common species of bumblebee as well as a drone fly and a bumblebee hoverfly.

Birds were less in evidence but perhaps the most surprising sighting occurred on the way back to the car park at Chopwell Woods, when a jay, normally a shy bird, casually worked its way through the trees above our heads for nearly five minutes while we took photos of it.

Jay

Slow Spring Start

It seems amazing that we are well into May and I haven't seen a single butterfly in the garden or managed to photograph one, which normally would have happened weeks ago.

Bees have been a little more obliging and one or two mining bees have started to appear on forget-me-nots.  Tree bumblebees have put in a few appearances and also seem to like the pink campions that have appeared from somewhere.

Buffish Mining Bee

Tree Bumblebee

On the last day of April I went to the Bakethin Reserve at the northern end of Kielder Water in search of mandarin ducks but didn't manage to see any.  In fact there wasn't much to see at all apart from some fairly standard issue ducks and a couple of shovelers fighting over a female.  Even the osprey landing area was deserted apart from a crow and clearly hadn't been built on.

Crow not osprey

I had a look at the South end of the reservoir and at various points on the River North Tyne, also without success.  Maybe the North Tyne at the northern end would have been a better bet.

On a bike trip a week ago, I came across quite a few chocolate mining bees on dandelions.  A more recent ride on Sunday in reasonably warm weather yielded a good few orange tips, a peacock and a red admiral, all in flight.

Chocolate Mining Bee

Back in the garden it was pleasing to see a woodpecker on the one peanut feeder I now have out - the first for many a long month.

Woodpecker

Also putting in an appearance has been a small number of nomad bees, as last year.  However, I'm not confident on precise identification from the photo and have sought further advice.

Nomad Bee

Laughably, just as I write this an unidentified white butterfly has just flown past...

Mystery Bees and Disappearing Butterflies, Fish and Birds

 Last week I spotted a couple of bumblebees in the garden that I felt I really couldn't identify.  I have sent photos to the Natural History Society to see if they can tell me what they are.

Bee 1

Bee 2

What caught my attention with Bee 1 was the lack of a buff or white tail.  Instead, as can be seen from a second photo, there is the merest tip of white at the very end of the tail.

Bee 1 - side view

After I took the photos I thought I noticed a slight interruption to the abdominal band and so wondered about broken-belted bumblebee.  This seems highly likely however in terms of other factors and it would have to have been far away from its normal local habitat.

Afterwards I did come across some information that Bee 2 might possibly be a late-flying hairy-footed flower bee worker, and not a bumblebee at all.  However I haven't seen one before so it would be interesting to know.

Last Thursday I squeezed in a fishing trip to Horton Grange.  Looking for bream or tench on the swim feeder, I caught just three small roach on worm near in and nothing on corn further out.  The worm bites were fairly consistent if cautious but tackle trouble emerged as the bale arm on the reel started to fly open when striking, thus preventing me catching more.

On Saturday, Alex and I set out to Finglandrigg Wood in Cumbria on a planned mission to track down the marsh fritillary.  In spite of two tours through the suspect area, we were unable to manage a single sighting.  Apart from various speckled wood, ringlet, small skipper, red admiral and meadow brown, the only out of the ordinary sighting was of a small tortoiseshell in pursuit of its mate (presumably).  First seen on a mossy rock in the early afternoon, they were still at it on the nearby boardwalk when we re-visited the area a couple of hours earlier.

Small Tortoiseshells

As when we visited the Campfield Moss a year ago there were some carder bees nectaring on foxgloves.  Last year I thought they were moss carder bees.  On further research I'm more doubtful but they were certainly of a lighter hue that the ones I see here.

Moving on to Campfield Moss for a late visit we again found that the birds had mostly absented themselves apart from oyster catchers, a buzzard and a kestrel.

However it was quite nice to see woodpeckers, tree sparrows and greenfinch on the feeders, amongst others.

Greenfinch

Tree Sparrow

Hairstreaks Record Broken

Because of the uncertainty about the nomad bee (see last post) I decided to capture another the day after to study it more closely.  Typically it became evident that I had trapped a different species of nomad altogether, so I had the job of making a separate identification.  I think this one might be Marsham's Nomad Bee though it was smaller than I expected and so I wasn't altogether certain.

Marsham's Nomad Bee?

The main event of this week was an outing to Dipton Woods on the e-bike to check for green hairstreaks on the first available day that promised consistent sunshine.  For a while I thought I'd misjudged badly as there was little sun to speak of when I finally got to the area around 11.30.  I was also considerably hampered by the fact that the rough and wet track I was trying to cycle up was blocked by a couple of fallen tree trunks.

Discouraged, I considered giving the whole thing up but checked a few bilberry bushes for remaining flowers and quite by chance came across a single green hairstreak on one of them in spite of the murky light.

Morale suitably bolstered, I evaded the fallen trees by walking the bike through some rough stuff and headed for the known 'hot spot' at the other end of the track, a south-facing slope that is sheltered from the wind by a wall.  I quickly spotted a couple more hairstreaks, then the sun finally did emerge for around 40 minutes stimulating a good deal more activity.  In the end I counted a total of 25 sightings, narrowly beating the 24 I saw on my first visit three three years ago.

Green Hairstreak

In the same area a large butterfly that looked unfamiliar flew straight past me without landing, a large flying bug landed in my hair and there was a small moth I couldn't identify.

Moth

On the way to Dipton Woods I saw my first swallows of the summer near Hedley and on the way back a red kite being pursued by crows between Bywell and Wylam, the furthest West I've seen one so far.

I'm getting a bit fed up with feeding the birds at the moment as all I seem to be achieving is enabling the jackdaws and magpies to have a blowout.  So it was good to have a couple of visits in between times from this lady woodpecker.

Woodpecker

Yesterday one particular bee spent a lot of time flying low over the lawn, as if looking for something.  I suspected a chocolate mining bee but narrowly failed to trap it in the bug box.  There have been one or two honey bees too, but not as many as last year.

Spring is Sprung

When I experimented by offering a nyger seed feeder to the local birds a couple of years or so ago, I was a bit surprised that it was all gobbled up by jackdaws and none of the fancy species I had hoped for got anywhere near it.  So when I was offered a bag of nyger seed surplus to requirements in Moffat, I had little doubt that it would quickly go the same way.

In fact the heavy sprinklings I put down on the bird table were totally shunned for weeks and interest could only be aroused by adding other titbits amongst the glut of uneaten tiny black seeds.

Eventually a pair of dunnocks and the odd blackbird have latched on to the permanent free lunch and at least some of the pile is getting shifted.  I would have expected the coal tits to love it and at least the odd goldfinch to take a look, but not even the jackdaws have shown much enthusiasm.  Perhaps the birds just have other things to do at this time of year.  The feeders haven't produced much either.

Finally emerging from Covid confinement, I took a trip to Edinburgh last week for cultural purposes.  I did manage to slot in an hour's walk in Princes Street Gardens but there was nothing around apart from a couple of magpies and pigeons in spite of a nice, sunny day.  The only other animals I saw were the stuffed ones in the National Museum.

On returning home, there was a little more on offer.  On Friday, I briefly saw a small tortoiseshell from the summer house as well as a bumblebee and a female woodpecker paid a rare visit to the peanut feeder.

Greater-spotted Woodpecker

On a bike ride yesterday there was another bumblebee and any number of skylarks singing, giving a strong sense of Spring.  Then today, single small tortoiseshell was resting on the laurel in the front garden.

Small Tortoiseshell

There seemed to be some staining on the left lower wing that looked a bit like bird lime.  As the temperature was around 9C I was surprised to see it at all and hope it has managed to take cover.  It's forecast to freeze tonight.

New Species Seen

Last Saturday I took a chance on the weather improving for a trip to Campfield Marsh in Cumbria with my son and fiancee in the hope of seeing a marsh fritillary.

Unfortunately the sun refused to shine but it was still a pleasant walk in a wetland environment with some different flora and fauna.

For a while I thought the only sign of butterfly or moth would be a drinker moth caterpillar but on coming to a woodland edge I noticed a moth that I later saw a few times - an aptly named common wave.

Drinker Moth Caterpillar

Common Wave

Further into the wood I saw a couple of light-coloured bumblebees I didn't recognise visiting foxgloves.  It was frustrating trying to identify them but I think from video evidence they were moss carder bees.

Moss Carder Bee

There were also a few birds around, notably a little egret, a single speckled wood butterfly and a strange growth on a tree.

Still after marsh fritillaries we dropped in for a shorter walk at Finglandrigg Wood with no more success but I did see the first definite meadow brown of the summer on one of many common spotted orchids and another bee imitator, this time a bumblebee hoverfly... if I've got it right.

Meadow Brown

Bumblebee Hoverfly

Back at home the day after I spotted to spot a patchwok leafcutter bee, no great rarity but a first for me.

Patchwork Leafcutter Bee

The jay is still  appearing from time to time but is very shy and disappears as soon as I move around in the house.

Jay

As you can see, s/he's about to disappear again.

I thought that the baby woodpecker was now feeding independently but there was a recent visit yesterday when the parent bird obliged, I think with some reluctance.

Woodpeckers

This Tuesday another butterfly target went unachieved as, in spite of reasonable weather, I couldn't see any sign of the white letter hairstreak at Bywell Bridge but there were a couple more first seasonal spottings when I saw a small skipper by the Tyne as well as three ringlets.  The latter may have been fresh on the wing and weren't settling but I have seen a couple since.

Small Skipper

Meanwhile there has been some interesting bird activity at home.

Young birds have fledged and a series of them have been visiting the garden with their parents to be fed.  Tits often do this and this year the blue tits have been particularly brave, regularly feeding their babies in the plum tree while I am sitting on the decking no more than three yards away.

A new development has been mother and baby woodpecker doing the same thing while I watched from the kitchen.

Woodpeckers

Then the latest was a whole family of greenfinches that turned up on the lawn, as many as five or six at one point.

Greenfinches

On a day trip to meet with family in Boroughbridge, I was interested to note that there is a day fishing ticket on the River Ure.  Someone landed what looked like a pike while we were there.  Further on we happened to see another whitethroat.

Back in the garden the foxgloves are out and attracting bumblebees.  As I suspected, these turned out to be garden bumblebees, the first I have positively identified.  They are keen on foxgloves and have long tongues to reach the pollen inside.

Whitethroat

Garden Bumblebee

This morning while making breakfast, the jay turned up in the garden again and was showing well close to the tree.  I was tempted to run for the camera but would have burned my food!

Friday 11th June

The morning I left Dumfries, I took a walk along the Nith from Nunholm to see if I could spot any kingfishers.  There weren't any but there were good views of sand martins swooping over the river south of the caul.

At home there were a few sporadic visits by woodpeckers (both genders), more invisible greenfinches and equally invisible willow warblers.

One day I spotted was a carpet moth sunning itself upside-down on one of my favourite pots.  To be more precise it was a garden carpet.  I don't usually have carpets in my garden.

Garden Carpet

We went fishing at Brenkley again the Wednesday after but it was astoundingly quiet on two leger rods and one pole line, until a switch to worm on the pole produced a small perch.  Then around 6.00 p.m. there was a strong run on one of the leger rods while I was on my own and I brought in a nice common carp in spite of getting in a tangle with the other rod.  It was taken on glugged sweetcorn.

Common Carp

We were fishing off the peninsular and wondered if it was a good swim.  There appeared to be a bank of weed about half way across.  On the other hand there was no sign of any other carp being taken near us.

We are now debating whether fishing with two rods is a good idea.  I think maybe start with one and put up another if no bites result... or maybe start with two and take one in if bites are frequent...

On the Thursday there was another interesting looking bee on the forget-me-nots.  On trying to identify it though, I wasn't so sure it's a bee at all.  Once again I emailed a friend at the Natural History Society of Northumberland who confirms that it is in fact a Narcissus Bulb Fly.

It's not a bee...

It's a Narcissus Bulb Fly

The forget-me-nots are now past their best and I am starting to see some large carder bees on other flowers around the decking,

This Monday I was out for a short walk along the Tyne from Wylam with my cousin and his wife.  We hadn't got very far when we noticed frenetic activity in the trees by a number of blue and great tits.  We soon saw they were trying to chase off a young-looking jay that had presumably discovered a nest it was trying to rob.

When we got to Hagg Bank Bridge, I noticed what I thought was a pied wagtail on a rock far beneath us.  For some reason I decided to take a photo and it proved in fact to be a common sandpiper. 

There weren't many butterflies to be seen fairly early in the day but while looking for them I rather liked the look of some white flowers amongst the campions.

Common Sandpiper

Maid's Violet

We came back over the Spetchells where a few buffish mining bees were still active and one or two orchids are starting to show.  The bird's foot trefoil is also coming through but not profuse enough yet to attract the common blue or dingy skipper.  Also strangely absent here were the sand martins, apart from a possible couple over the river.

Monday 8th March

Recent paucity of nature news can be blamed on poorish weather and continuing lockdown, hopefully better is soon to follow.

A slightly bright nore has been offered by several appearances of a male nuthatch in the garden and, on one sole occasion that of a woodpecker.  Yesterday I planted some wild flower seeds at the back of the garden as it is only now that frosty nights are starting to look less likely.  Part of the thinking here is that the copious amount of garlic mustard that used to grow in the same area hsn't yet appeared.  Maybe I was too radical when knocking it back last summer.

I've done a couple more walks in Chopwell Woods, whose main success lay in finding further routes that avoid the heavily-used car park and ice-cream van.  During the first one, there was at least some birdsong to be heard and evidence of jays in the trees, but that was all apart from a grey squirrel, the odd robin and a single wren.  Last week the second one was a return to the baffling near total absence of birds.  I can't understand it.  You'd think among so many trees there'd be treecreepers and even a crossbill or two.

One thing I did come across on the way in was a heron on nearby farmland.  This evokes the question I wondered about often in Dumfries.  Why do herons visit farmland in winter - to seek out worms and insects or because of fishmeal compost?

Heron

This one is obviously next to some flooded land but I can't imagine it would hold fish and it seems to be looking elsewhere.

More interesting was a visit with Malcolm to check out some of the lakes maintained by Wansbeck and Cramlington Angling Club during a brief warmer spell.  Walking up to Milkope Lake there were a good number of skylarks in the fields.  They were flying low in pairs rather than soaring alone and it looked like this was some sort of pre-mating activity.  On actually reaching the pond, a good number of people were fishing and catching small stuff.

On Horton Lake nearby, one elderly angler took about half an hour to land a near 6lb bream on fine pole tackle and a visit to Brenkley Lake established that it had recently produced a 19lb carp.  We've taken out membership and I hope to report on some fishing activity before the end of the month.  I had wondered if it would soon get warm enough for butterflies to be seen early but the weather quickly deteriorated over the weekend

A bike ride the Monday after started in mist temperatures of 3C rather than the anticipated 9C but at least led to the sighting of a group of tree sparrows huddling in a tree,  I was out riding again today in warmer but windy weather and did get a closer than usual view of some tufted ducks at Bradley Pond on the way home.

Tufted Ducks