The Covid thing left me with an ongoing chestiness and I decided on a concerted activity campaign during last week's good weather involving several bike rides, tennis and walking cricket.
One of the many bike rides was to Prestwick Carr to see what was on the feeders and looking out for any activity en route, having seen a few peacock butterflies (about 6) and a few bumblebee queens on my other travels as well as hearing several chiffchaffs.
Not much turned up until I came to the end of the track out of Ponteland Park, when I was quite pleased to get a shot of a greenfinch up on a telegraph wire after several attempts.
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| Greenfinch |
Both chiffchaffs and greenfinches have been turning up near the garden and hereabouts, usually heard rather than seen.
It was too early in the day for the short-eared owl at Prestwick Carr, but there was a single tree sparrow on the approach to the area and as usual several small birds near the feeders - notably reed buntings and willow tits as well as more greenfinches, other tits and the odd chaffinch. Annoyingly, the sun was in such a position that it was impossible to focus on them without scaring them off and the best I could manage was a brief video of a willow tit in the hedgerow.
Willow Tit
On Sunday, the last day of the really warm sunshine, Alex and I took a walk up to the the Gairs Viewpoint at RSPB Geltsdale in the hope we might see something interesting, which I said for me would be a grouse and either a peregrine or a merlin.
There were a few curlew near the car park. Afterwards sightings tended once again to be fleeting but we continued well with a redpoll, a greenfinch and a stonechat as we advanced through the tree scrub, having seen a few lapwing in semi-display mode.
Once we reached the moorland, Alex spotted what appeared to be a merlin harassing some passing crows. It looked like it had settled on a distant fencepost with a crow on another post nearby. The trouble was that neither of the photos I took clearly showed a merlin so it was a bit of a conundrum.
Further on we started to hear grouse in the heather and a pair or red grouse flew right over our heads - naturally without posing for the camera.
On the way back more and more meadow pipits lifted off in front of us and more peacocks started to appear along with a single buff-tailed bumblebee. A few buzzards were around and we spent some time working out that another distant bird on a wire was nothing more than a kestrel. There was no sign of a peregrine.
In all of this the best photos I got were a robin and a stonechat!
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Strangely the one butterfly that did linger was a lone tree bumblebee that looked a little small to be a queen but presumably was one.
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