On Saturday I joined up with Jennifer and Joe who are walking the Pennine Way in stages.
We met at Middleton-in-Teesdale to do the section to High Force. Unfortunately I 'hit the wall' at about four miles and only made it to Low Force, the easy access to High Force from the nearby hotel having closed about 15 minutes before I got there.
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| High Force |
We saw surprisingly little wildlife during the couple of hours or so. We thought there was a flock of fieldfares in some trees and there were three butterflies, one of which was a red admiral and a few buff-tailed bumblebee queens. Birdwise there was the odd lapwing and curlew plus a few pied wagtails.
One surprise though was three completely white mallards that paddled their way across the Tees below Low Force. Apparently this almost certainly means they were escapees as mallards held domestically are often bred to lose their natural colours.
We actually saw more birds while driving around the moors from place to place: partridge, a possible cuckoo, red grouse and short-eared owl. And many skylarks.
A buff tailed bumblebee queen finally landed in my garden the other day. So far they hadn't settled.
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| Queen Buff-tailed Bumblebee |
Due to poor weather I hadn't been out on the bike for a long time apart from a couple of short refresher rides. Again not much was seen but having got stopped at the level crossing at Wylam, I took a snap of the grey heron that frequently resides there.
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| Heron |
Anyway, on Sunday I took advantage of what had been an excellent weather forecast for a ride up the coast to Cresswell and Druridge - except that the non-stop sunshine expected never happened and I was buffeted all day by a heavy onshore breeze that made me wish I'd taken my winter gloves!
On the Blyth estuary I got a couple of nice views of shelduck and redshank on the mudflats.
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I did a detour around the Newbiggin area in search of Sandy Bay where rarities sometimes turn up - notably a bluethroat recently- but couldn't find it and made a quick exit to escape the Easter festivities.
At Cresswell and Druridge the most notable sighting was my first bar-tailed godwits, which turned up in both locations. The one of Cresswell has spilled some weed on itself.
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| Bar-tailed godwit |
I had hoped for avocets, which have recently appeared at both locations but unfortunately no luck and the spoonbill at Druridge didn't show either.
Nevertheless there was a reasonable tally of further sightings recorded including a little egret in the corner at Cresswell, sanderling, lapwing, canada and greylag geese, shoveler, teal, wigeon, lapwing and several more shelduck
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Unsurprisingly no butterflies were seen.
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