Monday 11th June

Female nuthatch

Of course the day after I complained about the jackdaws yobbish behaviour putting off other birds, a nuthatch turned up on the peanut feeder for the first time, a female.  It hasn't stopped me cutting down on the bird food over the past couple of days, though partly because I've been out most of the time.

I did a bike ride along cycle track 10 to Stamfordham and enjoyed the flatter landscape in the area.  There were some flowers just past Seaton Burn that I at first thought were orchids and haven't managed to identify, again lots of skylarks singing and most pleasingly a male redstart that appeared in some oaks just west of Stamfordham. Plus some sort of maple I wasn't totally sure about.

I held off reporting this as I knew that the Prudhoe U3A Nature Watch trip to Hawthorn Dene near Easington was coming off today, a venue that is known to be rich in wildlife because of the magnesian limestone geology (dolomite).

This inevitably lead to a profundity of less common flowers being seen and frankly I really did find it more or less impossible to keep up with the sightings.  We certainly saw some bee orchids and some mouse-ear hawkweed but eventually all the new names just swamped me. I stuck to what I know more - butterflies and birds.

And there was indeed a fair bit to occupy the attention in those areas.  Having not yet seen a blue this year, it was pleasing to see at least twenty common blues at different times and get a decent picture.  I saw my first small heath of the year and managed to get a picture of a dingy skipper (though it was very dingy) as well as a chimney sweeper moth.  I don't think I've seen as much flower meadow in one place for a long time.

Common blue

Chimney sweeper

Dingy dingy skipper

Ogling female kestrel

We did actually manage to get a glimpse of a skylark and an excellent view of a female kestrel, which some people thought was eyeing us up so it could move in to hunt in the same area once we passed on.  I was particularly pleased to see a whitethroat passing through.  There were also sand martins, a few swallows and pipits, a fulmar and a reed bunting.

The general consensus was the area will produce even more sightings in a couple of weeks in view of the delayed summer.

Maybe I will return.