Tuesday 31st March

A week ago today I got out for a bike ride from Matfen to Bellingham (or Wark as it turned out) not realising that driving in order to take exercise would shortly be expressly forbidden.

Almost as soon as I left Matfen, there was a nice view of a kestrel.  On the way up to Ryal a few butterflies were settling on some yellow colt's foot type flowers and I managed to identify my first small tortoiseshell of the year.  There were several other butterflies around during the rest of week, even on the cooler days, including in the garden, but all were on the wing and frustratingly impossible to identify positively.

Heading towards the moors it was actually possible to observe rather than just hear some skylarks in action and in the wooded areas chiffchaffs were now established and singing strongly. Somewhere around Throckrington some meadow pipits appeared and I briefly saw a falcon with a red chest and pointed wings in flight.  Not a good sighting, but I reckoned it was probably a male merlin - they like meadow pipits!

I decided to return by a slightly less arduous route but it was nice to see a yellowhammer in the hedgerows on the way back to Matfen - and an incidental buzzard.

A walk round Chopwell Woods a couple of days afterwards produced nothing but a robin begging for scraps and a pair of unidentified spiralling butterflies, so on Saturday I took the bike along the Tyne from Wylam. There were a pair of tufted ducks and a pair of wigeon on Bardley Pond - not bad for a smallish venue.

Going along the river was pleasant if not very eventful, but I did catch sight of some dozen or so ducks heading upstream past Ryton Golf Course.  Unfortunately the path was narrow and there were a lot of people around making it inadvisable to stop at the current time and the view was party obstructed by tree branches and twigs. I reckoned they might be goosanders, but if so it was a little strange as they all had brown beaks and so must have been females.

Going past the new housing towards Blaydon, there was a smart-looking great-crested grebe, which took me a bit by surprise as I've only seen them on lakes before.

Another legal cycle trip to Matfen produced little apart from lots of singing skylarks - and another stray buzzard.

I managed to get through all of this without getting a decent wildlife photo.  But I did take one of this green fly on the rather mucky window of my summerhouse. I'm not sure what it is but it reminded me of a fishing fly called Greenwell's Glory, meaning it might be some kind of olive - or maybe a lacewing?

Mystery green fly