Beginning afresh at Newbiggin

One consistent star performer on the stage of my garden bird table is the coal tit.  He/she, since there appears to be no difference, loves to harvest the numerous black sunflower seeds, always exiting backstage into the trees to consume them.

Recently, one bird made at least a dozen successive visits and you can only wonder if it isn't rather energy-sapping to perform in this energetic fashion.  Here's a brief sample:

Coal Tit feeding

Last week I at last achieved an objective when I visited Newbiggin and managed to catch up with some twites towards Beacon Point.

Twite

In fact there was a massive flock of about 50 to 100 birds visiting the seaside as they often do at this time of year.  Apparently there were a few shore larks around too but a jackdaw came down and flushed them shortly before I arrived.  There have been records of snow buntings at Newbiggin, but I think that was a little further down the coast.

Also in evidence on the day were a couple of meadow pipis and, as so often on the coast in Northumberland, stonechats:

Meadow Pipit

Stonechat

Down on the beach, there were a large number of birds dozing by the rock pools near the shoreline.  I took them to be golden plover.  However I was a bit stiff and and didn't fancy going down from the path and took photos at considerable distance.  On comparing them with images in my bird book I thought they looked more like dunlin or knot.  But it seems that golden plover they are.

Golden Plover

Facebook does have some uses!

Missing Out

As the weather has become harsher, my attempts to find interesting sightings have largely misfired.

The one new sighting was completely by chance.  As a result of a navigational error on my last long bike ride, I ended up at the village of Broomley, where a good number of redwing were feeding on berries.

There was talk of a mandarin duck on the Derwent in Gateshead, so I took a good scout around but found nothing but a couple of goosander.  Then one was reported at Saltwell Park but it had gone by the time I visited, though I was rather surprised to see a kingfisher flash by.  Not the place I'd have chosen to look for one.

The only thing I did see much of apart from mallards and tufted ducks was a couple of cormorants. By the time a I captured one airing itself, the light had pretty much gone.

Cormorant

Incidentally, folk at the Tennis Club have confirmed seeing salmon going up the weir during November.  I saw one about a month ago but thought it was a freak one-off.  It seems there must be a very late run of salmon on the Derwent.

After a dog walk at Plessey Woods produced nothing but some long-tailed tits and a pigeon last week, Malcolm and I headed for Felton at the weekend as a large number of waxwings had visited a few days before, but once again there was no sign of them, even though we got good tips where to look from local walkers.

I had been hoping to get a video of long-tailed tits mobbing the suet balls I've been putting out in the garden lately, but the best I got was one long-tailed tit and a blue tit:

Long-tailed and blue tit

I might do better after Christmas if I place the feeder nearer the back fence.

Since the sub-zero temperatures and snow arrived  it has got a bit more interesting.  You might not consider a female chaffinch and a juvenile starling rarities but they don't show themselves here regularly at all.

Lastly there was a very dark looking corbid looking around, which I thought was a crow.  It was only when I fiddled with the contrast on the (again very dark) photo I got as it made its exit that some jackdaw features appeared, notably the eye, and I now wonder if it could have been a hybrid.

Jackdaw or Crow?

However I could only find one mention of jackdaw/carrion crow hybridisation on the internet...

Confusion and Consultation

On 11th November I was on the way to the tennis club and paused briefly to check out an expanse of ivy near the Derwent for ivy bees.  What in fact appeared to my surprise was a single red admiral.  I've made a mental note of this as the latest date I can remember seeing an active butterfly, discounting the one I found in my garden in Dumfries one midwinter. 

That one had clearly erred from its hibernation spot in sunny weather but was unable to fly in the near freezing temperature.  Having done a bit of research, I captured it and allowed it to warm up in the house for forty minutes, after which time it hopefully flew back to its chosen place of slumber on release.

On SundayI took my new camera out looking for a couple of bird novelties.

The first target was Northumberlandia, where bramblings had been reported.  A lady said a birdwatcher had seen 24 in a woodland area but I couldn't find them, the only suspect turning out to be a stonechat.

Stonechat

However I did manage to get a nice shots of some tree sparrows on the feeders.

Tree Sparrows

Someone had reckoned they had seen a black-throated diver at the QE2 lake, so that was my next destination.

The trouble was I was baffled by a series of distant sightings of large diving ducks.  In the end I sought advice from those more expert than myself on facebook as to what I'd actually captured on film.  Fortunately it was duly forthcoming.

The first suspects I had lined up turned out to be great crested grebe and goosander in winter uniform.

Great Crested Grebe

Goosander

A third suspect came a bit nearer the shore.  It isn't a black-throated diver but a juvenile red-throated diver according to trusted advice on facebook - a nevertheless excellent first sighting.

Red-throated Diver

It's not actually easy to identify these ducks in winter plumage and the discussion of black-throated v red-throated diver is a particular issue. One respondent suggested this guide on the subject.

Quite amusing at the same location was to suddenly spot a whooper swan by the bank.  According to a local couple it is the ONLY whooper swan on the lake amid hundred or so mute swans!  At the top end there were also considerable numbers of gadwall.

Whooper Swan

Gadwall (male and female)

However my confusions were not at an end as I put in a brief visit to Killingworth Lake on the way home.

Here there was nothing special to mention but another duck that defied identification.

Mystery Duck

It was poorish light and the water looks brighter than the bird!  Anyway, I half suspected a hybrid and this was duly confirmed on referral - probably mallard and domestic duck hybrid.  Apparently it has been there for years and I think I may have photographed it while looking for a scaup a couple of winters ago.

Mission Accomplished

It's a pity the weather in the middle weeks of October was so rubbish as one of my junior buddleia bushes actually produced a couple of decent sprigs during that period that could potentially have attracted a late butterfly or two.

Buddleia - the last blooms

Anyway persistent rain meant it wasn't to be.  The last butterfly I saw passed over the car park at Washington Sports Centre on 20th October.  It was brown so presumably a small tortoiseshell or comma, I couldn't tell.

One nice surprise was however a visit from a tree sparrow to the reduced offerings in the feeders.  Not a rare but nevertheless an infrequent occurrence.

Tree Sparrow

As you can maybe tell, it proved to be a bit of a poser.

After various postponements, we decided that the monsoon season was finally over at the weekend and I drove over to Alex and Vicki's for a visit to the massive reed bed on the River Tay between Port Allen and Errol.  The key target, the bearded tit, is supposed to inhabit the area but we didn't really rate the chances of success.  In particular I reckoned bearded tits might not fancy the extreme cold that can be experienced north of the Firth of Forth.  In fact it turned out to be a lovely day.  The trees were at their most colourful and bathed in sunshine.

After a fleeting encounter with a red squirrel, Vicki thought she heard some bearded tits. Then, on a pathway out through the reeds, we hit gold.  I saw one straight away but wasn't totally sure.  A twitcher turned up, himself sporting a magnificent russet beard, and soon they - the tits - were all over the place, at least a good few dozen of them.

We were snapping away busily as they mostly didn't stay in the same place for long.  And I was quite pleased that I even managed a couple of videos with my fancy new camera.

Bearded Tits

I realise there may have been some unconscious gender bias going on there as I seem to have zoomed in on the males, so here in the interests of balance are a couple of shots of the females.

Female Bearded Tit

Female Bearded Tit?

As you can see and maybe would have expected, they are clean shaven.  We did wonder though whether the second one might be a juvenile.  It was the first time I have seen bearded tits since I visited Minsmere 12 years ago.

After a most pleasant session and no sign of a marsh harrier, we gave ourselves the 'job done' sticker,  and spurning the chance to pursue a mandarin duck at Scone, we headed south for Loch Leven.

This was actually a good deal less rewarding as there wasn't too much going on in the first hide we visited and by the time we got to the second hide, the light was getting tricky so that I, at least found it tricky to see the colouration of the ducks.

In fact the best shots I got weren't of ducks at all:

Stonechat

Little Egret

The others we observed were a lot of coots, some teal, wigeon and a few goldeneye.  

I was a bit disappointed not to see any pink footed geese as there had been plenty around but days earlier and, on trying to perform alchemy on some distant greylags with the camera, I can now see that I actually captured a few whooper swans even further away.  The shot is unfortunately too blurry to publish - even on here!

Otherwise I did dryly remark that there was more wildlife on the steps going down to the trails - which you actually can't see on descending them.

The wildlife steps

Another visual did however catch my interest though.  It was a sign on the butterflies and moths present, which included a picture of a small blue.  Clearly a strong case for a revisit one summer...

There's an interesting sequel to our trip of a non-nature variety.  As we got ready to go home from Loch Leven, I wanted to check a couple of sightings on my mobile phone and discovered to my horror that I no longer had it. Vicki and Alex phoned it several times and got a ringing tone and I realised I had probably lost it somewhere on the woodland trail by the Tay earlier.

As we drove back there frantically to beat the dusk, Vicki got a call from Mr Huang, a (we think) Chinese tourist who'd picked it up and were able to meet him as he reached his airbnb in Errol.  Apparently he'd heard the alarm going off that I had set to remind me to text a friend.  

Bearded tits AND getting a phone back you lost on a woodland trail!  How much luckier can I get?

Never Give Up...

Sometimes I'm too much the pessimist.  Although we did not get the summer-like temperatures experienced in the South of England, we did get a warmer than usual murk with occasional bursts of sunshine into the high teens.  The upshot was that I called time too early on the buddleia, the largest bush suddenly producing a decent sprig of flower in its very centre over the last few days.  This managed to briefly attract a fine red admiral on the 8th October, thereby achieving a personal mini-ambition and establishing a record that may not last long in the face of climate change.

Red Admiral

Meanwhile i have a new toy, a Nikon Coolpix camera, bought especially with the idea in mind of boosting my birdwatching efforts.  The wee Panasonic Lumix I have been using is brilliant in many respects but the zoom can be slow and the focus imprecise.

Perhaps understandably the additional camera has brought some technical issues.  There was a good opportunity to try it out yesterday on a Naturewatch visit to Hauxley Nature Reserve.  As on recent visits to Hauxley nothing spectacular was sighted, which didn't trouble me as I was mainly using it to practice my camera skills.

It was therefore disturbing to note that I had difficulty in seeing much through the viewfinder and when focussing on distant birds.  I started to wonder if I was going to get any usable shots at all.  Anyway I persevered and  managed to solve the focussing issue after a bit.

Here is a gallery of the results:

Coal Tit

Bullfinches with Goldfinch

Chaffinch

Shoveler

Goldeneye

Grey Heron

Mallard

Mallow

Obviously the coal tit was taken in the garden and added as my first ever attempt. 

It wasn't until I got home before I solved how to resolve the dim viewfinder.  Easy enough when you know how but with 308 pages of user manual as well as a very intricate looking piece of photo processing software, it could be a long learning curve!

Surprise and Disappointment

 As expected the buddleia hasn't lasted into October well enough to have much chance of attracting further butterflies, as just two or three reasonable sprigs remain.  The last red admiral to visit was sighted on 24th September.  Perhaps surprisingly though, the penultimate visitor on the 21st was a one-off comma.

Comma

Holly blue sightings did manage to rise by one, making a presumed final total of 14.

On Friday I finally got round to manage a planned visit to Hammerlands at Moffat (now apparently The Green Frog) to see if I could catch a trout on my father's old fly fishing gear.  Unfortunately most of the lake was heavily weeded and I didn't catch anything - and neither did the other two visitors on the day.  I did however manage to see some hefty looking trout but most were moving around at considerable speed and seemed disinterested in any offerings.

Staying over with my son in Crawford, we then got out for a birdwatching trip to Lochwinnoch RSPB  that proved my theory that you will often see nothing interesting until you are on the point of giving up.

Although it was a pleasant walk, there wasn't that much birdlife around, the main items noted being shoveler, heron and long-tailed tit plus some distant views of goldeneye.

Goldeneye

One interesting section was the boardwalk to the Peel Tower, where there was an abundance of himalayan balsam.  We noted several bees and wasps nectaring on it, all of which seemed to have white markings on the thorax.  I wondered if the first one we saw was a rare bee or if some kind of disease was prevalent.  We eventually concluded that it was in fact pollen from the balsam as it affected all of them, including honey bee, carder bee and buff-tailed bumblebee.  Attempts to photograph it were  in vain as the marking simply doesn't show up well.  This was my best attempt:

Buff-tailed Bumblebee

On a nearby lake, we did manage to add great-crested grebe and tufted duck to the list for the day.

Tufted Duck

Great Crested Grebe

Giving up on further sightings, we headed for Lanark where we bought fish and chips, which we decided to eat at Lanark Loch, mainly because it is a known carp venue.

Leaving binoculars and cameras in the car, we found a bench near the water and opened up the chips.  It was no surprise when a couple of swans came over but they were then followed by up to 20 gulls we couldn't immediately identify.  It turned out they were bonaparte's gulls, an occasional migrant from North America.  Fortunately, Vicki managed to record this first ever sighting for me on her mobile phone.

Bonaparte's Gull

Flies and Butterflies

I noted with interest that the Big Butterfly Count has recorded an overall increase in sightings this year.  The reckoning is that the rainy spring was good for caterpillars.  Whilst I can't dispute this I still think that early-emerging species suffered.  While the multi-brooded speckled wood recovered after a slow start, I think the orange tip had a bad year.  It doesn't feature in the Count as it's no longer on the wing in mid-July.  Green-veined white numbers are confirmed down and it seemed to me that it had a short good spell at the end of July but wasn't seen much before that.  Small white was more considerably outvoted by large white here than generally.

The buddleia is now fading fast and it's a race to the bottom for the last garden sighting.  This week there has just been the odd individual red admiral and just one small tortoiseshell and yesterday I felt lucky to capture red admiral and large white (plus a few flies) together.  There had also been a speckled wood moments before.

Red Admiral with Large White

Meanwhile the holly blue count is up to 13, but none in the last few days.

It has been flies rather than bees that have caught my attention lately, causing a bit of a problem as I'm only at the guessing game stage when it comes to identifying them.

for example last week I discovered a spider (absolutely no attempt at identification!) about to devour this rather hairy orange fly.

Spider with Fly

It appears the fly maybe a yellow dung fly, which immediately reduced any sympathy I may have felt for it.

You may also observed another wee fly with an orange abdomen on the butterfly snap above.  I encountered this one again the other day, and it seems to roughly fit the description of the common orange legionnaire.

Common Orange Legionnaire?

Well not so common to me as I can't remember seeing them before.

Lastly  i topped up the bird nuts a bit today and was quickly visited by a another nuthatch, this time a male.

Nuthatch with Great Tit and Blue Tit

I'm keeping my eye out for ivy coming into flower in the hope of nectaring butterflies or an ivy bee, but it's early days yet.

Taking Stock

Intermittent bad weather and a recent covid infection have restricted my abilities a good deal.  Now I feel like this mediocre summer has slipped by me without managing to take much advantage of it.  The virtual loss of July meant only two truncated attempts to find the purple hairstreaks on the Derwent Walk, with only three or four distant sightings to show for it.  I never even attempted looking for white-letter hairstreak or grayling, finding the only suitable days were those when I had something else on.

The garden has provided the main source of consolation with continuing abundance of peacocks and red admirals on the plentiful buddleia.  I'm pleased though that I have resisted the temptation of repeatedly photographing them this year.  Nothing really substitutes for just observing them in action for a few minutes.  As the ability to take delight in what life has to offer subsides with age, I still find the appearance of lots of butterflies around the buddleia enthralling and probably always will.

It's interesting to note that the dominant visitor at the time of the Big Butterfly Count in July was, here as elsewhere, the red admiral, but by three weeks later the peacock was outnumbering them considerably.  Just recently, the red admiral has resurged and numbers of each are more or less equal.

I had wondered if I have seen more commas than small tortoiseshells this year.  Unfortunately when I decided to start checking about a week ago, numbers of both species dropped off and there isn't a large enough number being seen for comparison.  Painted lady has yet to appear.

It is known that it is a bumper year for the holly blue and I have now counted eight sightings without spending a great deal of time looking for them.  Only one actually landed for a short period of time, typically while I was busy with some sort of chore.

I've cut down considerably on the amount of bird food I put out because of rats but a pleasant surprise recently came from a visit from a female nuthatch, the first for many a long month.  Coal tits have also been more in evidence than earlier in the year.

Of bees there has been much less to report.  The highlight was the appearance of an early bumblebee queen, which presumably was feeding up before overwintering.  I have been keeping an eye out for flower bees but there has only been one genuine suspect that quickly moved on.

My attention was drawn one day by a specimen that seemed to have much more fur on its abdomen than a bumblebee but I think on investigation it is just a common carder bee, which has recently been the commonest garden visitor in the bee department.

Common Carder Bee

When I snapped it from on top, there was no sign of any abdominal fir at all.  Maybe it was just pollen dust.

Butterfly Review

The first weekend in August I was in Krakow to celebrate my son's fortieth birthday.  Obviously the time was mainly dedicated to celebrations of various kinds.  Apart from a chance sighting of a peregrine falcon in the town centre, we did however end up in the zoo.

I'm not a great fan of zoos but bever having visited one since childhood, I did actually rather enjoy myself checking out this and that and confirming my son's impression that the eagle owl had been mis-translated into English on the sign - as I could see it was correctly labelled as Uhu in German.

I won't go into boring detail but here are a couple of the better photographs:

Pigmy Hippopotamus

Leopard

On arriving back home last Tuesday, it was delightful to see several butterflies fluttering around the buddleia bushes.  

I think I have to reverse my pessimistic forecast about butterfly numbers this year as it's apparent that the later flying species have done very well.  Not to be seen before I left, peacocks have arrived from nowhere in large numbers and I see that the Big Butterfly Count has registered a big increase in the number of red admirals.

Here however, the comma has definitely been the butterfly of the year, appearing in twos and threes several times a day in good sunshine.

Peacocks and Comma

Also very gratifying is that I have now seen three holly blue passing over the garden.

The loser in all this may be the small tortoiseshell, which for the first time has been appearing less frequently than the comma.  

On a brief cycling rest stop at Ryton Meadows last Thursday, I spotted two small copper and a small heath.  It may be that the serious fire that devastated much of the woodland scrub last year has had a positive result in allowing the heathland grasses and flowers to reclaim some territory.  It will be interesting to see how this land gets managed in future.

More recently, I have faced a couple of identification challenges at home.

A green dragonfly has turned up on three occasions to sun itself in the garden.

Southern Hawker?

It's definitely a hawker and I think probably a Southern rather than a Common Hawker but the difference between the two is small and I'm no expert.  Interestingly the wings are almost completely transparent.

Likewise the moth I found snoozing on the garage wall looks to be a grey carpet but I couldn't find an exact image match and there are similar species.

Grey Carpet?

It's still one of the most enjoyable times of the year for me when butterflies appear in numbers, weather permitting.

Better Late than Never

Thanks to some breaks in the otherwise depressing July weather, there have been outbursts of increased activity, particularly amongst the butterflies - at last I'm tempted to say.

For it was just five days ago that the commas made their first appearance and sightings of red admiral, large and green-veined white and small tortoiseshell became more regular.  Promising additions were fleeting appearances by holly blue and humming bird hawk moth.

Comma

Large White

Around the same time a female woodpecker appeared on the peanuts, closely followed by a male and the latter has visited daily ever since. 

Female Woodpecker

Male Woodpecker

I did the Big Butterfly Count yesterday and red admiral came out in the lead with nine sightings in fifteen minutes.

On Friday I led the Prudhoe U3A Naturewatch visit to Chopwell East Field, a recently declared nature reserve, uncertain what we might see.

In the event, it was a lot. There were dozens of meadow brown and small skipper as well as a good few ringlets, green-veined white, speckled wood, red carpet and both five and six spot burnets as well as a small copper, small tortoiseshell, red admiral and peacock. We also managed to observe all four common species of bumblebee as well as a drone fly and a bumblebee hoverfly.

Birds were less in evidence but perhaps the most surprising sighting occurred on the way back to the car park at Chopwell Woods, when a jay, normally a shy bird, casually worked its way through the trees above our heads for nearly five minutes while we took photos of it.

Jay