I'm not too sure why but I've seen remarkably little of note recently. Perhaps the mild weather has meant that local birds are still finding plenty of food without visiting my garden. Also I'm maybe just not so tuned in to looking out for birds above as more in the habit of looking down for bees and butterflies. That's not to say there aren't plenty of interesting visitors stopping off on the Northumberland coast and makes me think that I must time my visit to Holy Island a little later next year.
Having failed in an attempt to see the subalpine warbler at Tynemouth on a bike ride two weeks ago, I thought things would change in the garden when I started putting out suet balls again but there was virtually no response when I hung them in the same location as last year. Even yesterday I noted there were still a couple of bees around but various attempts to find an ivy bee have failed and only produced wasps.
One more promising note is that, for the first time in a while, I have seen an occasional coal tit coming to the feeders, and a robin has started to investigate the suet balls. Otherwise it's been hedge-to-hedge jackdaws with the occasional blue tit, great tit or dunnock.
A brief walk at Chopwell Woods two days ago produced the usual - i.e. virtually nothing heard or seen apart from three grey squirrels.
I had been lined up to go on a U3A visit to St Mary's Island today but had to cancel because of a domestic issue.
Slightly better was a bike ride yesterday. Having got to Hexham without finding in the countryside except a rabbit and a big roost of chaffinches near the Tyne, I decided on a detour via Whittle Dene Lakes on the way home. Here, alarmingly, two waters were closed because of blue algae, which seems remarkably late in the year. However, there were a few cormorants, a single lapwing in flight and a kestrel hunting as well as a few canada geese and tufted ducks.
Unfortunately none of these resulted in a successful photo.
Which reminds me that I did very nearly get a good picture of a young kestrel perching in a nearby tree last Tuesday - until it saw me!
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