Saturday 28th December

Last Saturday I caught up with daughter Jennifer and fiance Joe at the Saltholme RSPB Reserve near Seal Sands - distinctly brownbelt country.  The main purpose was to start off a complex exchange of Christmas and Birthday presents while fitting in some birdwatching and refreshments.

It was clear from internet search that there were a large number of fieldfare and a good few redwing present, and these were fairly quickly identified, including the leucistic fieldfare advertised, which actually showed up on two or three separate occasions and therefore was adjudged to be showing off just a bit. Just to confirm, it hadn't been snowing...

Fieldfares

Redwing

Leucistic Fieldfare

On moving to the first hide, we saw a few greenfinch, tits and tree sparrows and phenomenal number of

Peregrine Falcon

goldfinches crowding in around the feeders.  At distance it was just possible to pick out a solitary peregrine falcon that remained static on a fencepost for all the time we stayed, halfway over to a line of factories to the north of the pond. I wondered if it was possibly a juvenile.

Walking over the scrub land, we saw a few kestrels and a large flock of lapwings moving back and forth. Things became somewhat quieter when we reached the Saltholme Hide, so much so that these wigeon obviously decided to take a wee nap.

Sleepy wigeon

Unfortunately we didn't see any peregrines hunting, nor the marsh harriers that have consistently been reported.  This was for me the biggest disappointment as a pair were briefly spotted on the day and I had no idea that marsh harriers are regularly sighted as far North as the Tees Estuary.

Thursday 19th December

There have been one or two spontaneous nature occurrences over the past few days.

On a trip to Morpeth I had a bit of time to spare and caught up with a goosander among a group of gulls being fed at the edge of the river .

Goosander

Last Friday I was cycling back along the Derwent Valley from the gym and it was a bit of a surprise to see two bullfinches and two jays before anything more mundane turned up. There was also a grey heron above the fish pass near Winlaton so I suppose that shows it must get used, even though I've never seen any sign of fish in the Derwent and only ever one angler.

On Tuesday I finally managed a long-postponed trip to the hide at Clara Vale, which I found after some faffing to be very near the cricket pavilion i use in the summer. I wanted to check whether rumours of a kingfisher being there/not being there were correct.

As soon as I arrived, the kingfisher arrived on a lone branch just ten metres or so in front of the hide. It hung around while I fumbled with the camera and I was still fumbling when it landed briefly in a willow just to the left of the hide window.

For the next half hour or so it rotated around the pond at different points and you could see it splashing into the water to catch a tiddler.  Just as it was starting to get dark it again perched in front of the hide and I finally got the shots I wanted.  Just before I packed up it flew towards the hide.  I momentarily thought it was going to fly in my face before it veered off into the woods to the right.  As I got ready to leave I could actually see it front on through the side window of the hide - almost as if IT was observing me!

Kingfisher

Yesterday there was an amusing game in the garden. Grey Squirrel appeared again but instead of making for the sunflower hearts feeder, he started trying to dig up bits of the lawn.  I gradually realised he wanted to hide some nuts. The lawn was quite frozen so he had no success until he started at the bit where I had dug in the rescued buddleia. Just before this, one of the thuggish local jackdaws started paying attention and following him around. Eventually the jackdaw sneaked up while he was digging and gave him a nip on the tail before fluttering off towards the decking.  Grey Squirrel seemd deterred by this and retired, whereupon the jackdaw moved in and started pecking into his hidey hole.  As I didn't see any nuts being buried or retrieved, I suspect there was no victor in this little contest.

It's not only around the house that there have been a lot of squirrels.  I saw at least a dozen on a short walk in Chopwell Woods this morning - plus literally hundreds of wood pigeons.

Wednesday 11th December

Grey Squirrel

Things have been quite lively in the garden as the nights darken.  It has clearly been a good year for grey squirrels, whom I have regularly seen passing along the trees at the back, no doubt commuting to the oak tree just down the burn to collect acorns.

One made a couple of forays into the garden itself and eventually ended up on the bird feeder that contains sunflower hearts.  On closer inspection it proved that one of the holes in the feeder has been considerably enlarged.

There have also been regular invasions of long-tailed tits, sometimes half a dozen at a time. For some reason I was particularly struck by how dark the markings are on their back this winter. In typical fashion, they arrive suddenly and only

Long-tailed Tits

stay briefly before moving on.

Long-tailed tits were even more in evidence at Shibdon Pond yesterday when I took a break from the hide which was full of Naturewatchers.  There must have been at least twenty passing along the south bank.  From the hide, the sightings were pretty much dominated by gulls. Apart from the normal things you'd expect to see (teal, shoveler, etc) there were a good few shelduck patrolling the far bank.

On the edge of the grassy area where there the canada geese like to promenade there were also a couple of domestic ducks - one a hybrid of some sort and the other a muscovy duck.

Shelduck

Teal	Muscovy Duck

I got one bike ride in last Wednesday when the weather looked up and noticed a couple of kestrels hovering - one just north of Wylam and another north of Ponteland on the Morpeth road.  Red kites are also starting to appear more regularly over Rowlands Gill.