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.