All Quiet

It's noticeable that I haven't posted much recently, for the very good reason that not much has been happening.  Continuing wet weather spells have made going out looking for birds on spec unattractive. Usually there are one or two winter rarities turning up in the North East and staying around, but this year not very much at all is getting reported - a couple of fleeting appearances of little auk flocks at least capturing my interest briefly.

I had hoped to see a few waxwings sometime but it's clear there hasn't been a major irruption this year and for the most only single birds have been reported.  Apparently there haven't been any hawfinches either, except a good deal further South.

Anyway I participated in the Big Garden Birdwatch again this year. The scores were:  Blue tit 5, long-tailed tit 5, 3 each for jackdaw, wood pigeon and collar dove, 2 for coal tit, great tit, nuthatch and bullfinch and just 1 for robin, blackbird and dunnock.  There were no sparrows or starlings, which is mostly the case.

I was pleased with the five long-tailed tits, as they've only appeared sporadically this year and a bit surprised that coal tit didn't outnumber great tit, which it might have done on any other day.  An odd number of collar doves was interesting, since I invariably see them in pairs. 

This was probably the most successful Big Garden Birdwatch I've had here, as in the past they've produced few simultaneous sightings.

Today I got out for only the second lengthy bike ride this year, as the rainy day forecast did not materialise.  As a first sign of better times, I saw my first few clumps of snowdrops this year and later a whole bank of them - as well catching a rare hour of sunshine.

Snowdrops

A One Off...

The weather since New Year has discouraged excursions and cycle trips except for the most hardy.

With some reluctance and in need of exercise, I decided to take a walk in Chopwell Woods on Monday afternoon in freezing but sunny conditions.  I always expect the most common form of animal to be seen in Chopwell Woods is the domesticated wolf, and fear that I won't see anything like the amount of things I would see in the garden anyway.  On Monday, this comprised blue tit, great tit, coal tit, long-tailed tit, sparrow, chaffinch, bullfinch (3) and nuthatch as well as robin and blackbird.

This fear was largely fulfilled - just a few robins and tits around until I noticed an area near Victoria Garesfield where some birds were advancing from a patch of evergreens to drink in a small stream that hadn't frozen.

Some distance away using a lot of zoom, it turned out that one of the birds showing flashes of red turned out not to be a robin, but a redwing.

Redwing

Now this wasn't really a one-off as it's clear from what others have been posting that there is an influx of redwing in the area just now.

However, for me it was the first redwing I have seen since I relocated to the North East nearly eight years ago, so for me a definite landmark that made the whole walk worthwhile.

If I'd actually been looking for Redwing, Chopwell Woods isn't where I would have started.

A Quiet Period

I haven't posted for some time for the simple reason that I haven't been seeing anything I felt worth reporting.

Partly I haven't made the effort.  There have been a few potential sightings at the coast. Having missed them at Seaton Sluice, an increasing number of snow buntings have appeared on the links at Whitley Bay near where I once lived, as have couple of black redstarts at Cullercoats.  But I have seen both species before and the supposed 'rarities' that occasionally turn up were restricted to known occasional visitors (green-winged teal, American wigeon) and for me unexciting seabirds, though I was briefly tempted by a report of some little auk somewhere.

I was keeping an eye out for any waxwings appearing and there were a small number at North Shields last week that were not expected to linger.  It seems too late and too warm to expect a major irruption.

On my travels the most interesting thing I saw was a pair of goosander on the Derwent near Swalwell.

I was however pleased to note last week the return of long-tailed tits on the suet balls I started to put out when the first minor frost appeared.

Some long-tailed tits

More long-tailed tits

It's possible to get seven or so visiting the same feeder.

Today though, they were outdone by an invasion of the more common members of the tit family, which actually continued for perhaps 15 minutes:

Blue, great and coal tits

Tits are almost always the most common visitors to the garden. This seemed to a case of taking advantage of the lull before the latest forecast storm moves in. 

It'll be interesting to see if there are any more rare visitors to the garden over the coming weeks.

Quiet Days

I haven't been active much lately, the reason being that there hasn't been much ado.

The rarities that were showing up on the run-in to Christmas aren't showing up any more with the exception of gulls (which don't interest me overmuch) and an american pipit which is a long way off in North Northumberland and it seems to me not worth chasing when I probably wouldn't have been able to distinguish it from the other pipits that occur on the coast.

Nuthatch

The garden has provided the normal fare with the long-tailed tits visiting if sporadically and the nuthatch still appearing almost daily.  I hear the long-tailed tits quite a lot in the Derwent Valley.

The Big Garden Birdwatch again passed with low numbers and birds that I would normally expect to see not turning up, including the pair of collar doves that have landed now and again.  The overall totals (maximum seen at any one time) were:

Jackdaw 3, Woodpigeon 2, Robin 2, Blue Tit 2, Blackbird 1, Coal Tit 1.  Nothing to write home about but this seems to be normal for the past few years.

Bike rides and car trips have produced vary little apart from the odd bird of prey.  

I did finally get out for half an hour at Lamesley Pasture at lunchtime today.  Here there was a large number of greylag geese, possibly 100, and around 20 moorhens digging around in the bankside mud, which is as many as I've counted at once.  A couple of them looked like they might be males getting feisty with each other in preparation for the breeding season.

Moorhens

Otherwise the main thing with wings that could be seen in the distance was the Angel of the North.

I should have more to report in ten days after my latest nature trip in Spain, with which I hope to bridge the transition from winter to spring.

Even More Butterflies

A quick ride round the northern part of Chopwell Wood proved that my previous laments about the shortages of speckled wood do not signal its total demise, as I saw half a dozen of them within half an hour.

Perhaps more interesting since I don't recall spotting them there before was a healthy display of orchids along the slightly remote track I followed:

Orchids

Common Spotted Orchid

I'm not sure what kind they are but they reminded me that I'd seen a cracker a few days earlier at the Spetchells - a common spotted orchid I believe. 

However I digress...

Last Sunday I cycled to Weetslade Country Park, enticed by an article suggesting the presence of small copper and small skipper, and still anxious to see as many butterflies as possible. 

I arrived about lunchtime and settled near the top of the hill and saw nothing for forty five minutes apart from a single red-tailed bumble bee.  Then just before I moved on a single common blue appeared.

Moving around a bit I didn't find anything until right near the western exit I came across a triangle of grassy heathland, where things really started to happen.

Within an hour I totalled 25 ringlets, 12 male common blue, one of which sunbathed next to me repeatedly plus 5 of what I assumed at the time would be small skipper. On inspection of photographs however they were more likely large skippers - wasn't expecting that one!

Large Skipper

Small copper didn't appear - probably between broods - but a couple of girls said they had seen several small heath and I reckon I might have caught sight of one in flight but wasn't certain.

As at the Spetchells, I noticed a lack of bird's foot trefoil.  As there the main compensation seems to be an immense number of buttercups, which is what the skipper was nectaring on.

There were also a couple of speckled wood along the woodland edge and several on the cycle track through Ponteland, proving that rumours of its demise are indeed exaggerated.

Back at home the tits have finally realised that the caged peanut feeder is indeed for their benefit.

Plus there was a brief but noticeable reappearance of female red mason bees around the bug hotel.

One of them landed on my hand yesterday but more significant was the appearance of a broken-belted bumblebee worker on the plants nearest the house.  Unfortunately, my new wonder camera let me down, only managing hopelessly blurry shots, but I got a clear view and was pretty confident of what I saw.

Home Sweet Home

A curse upon Chopwell Woods!   I keep visiting in the hope that it will produce some reasonable sightings and invariably come back disappointed.

On my last attempt about three weeks back, the main notable event was the almost total flooding of the southern path into the woods from Blackhall Mill. 

I only managed to start the walk at all by scrambling through the puddles next to the bushes and the best thing I actually saw were a few clumps of snowdrops by the River Derwent after getting off the bus.

In spite of wandering around fairly extensively through the western part of the woods, it was pretty much like a desert with hardly a thing to be seen and precious little to be heard - just a couple of blackbirds, the odd pigeon and a few blue tits.

Even when I strayed into Chopwell East Field during a burst of sunlight, the only change was a slight increase in the amount of bird song.  You would usually reckon to see a squirrel or two somewhere, but absolutely zero - just our canine friends and their captive humans.

A couple of bike rides - to Bolam Lake and yesterday to Corbridge produced nothing at all either.

So once again my interest has been tied to what happens in the garden and nearby.

Red kites have been active over the village and on one occasion right over the house as I drove into the front drive.  Coal tits and long-tailed tits have been doing well, the latter being the second most-spotted tit visitor and interestingly both are more prevalent than great tit, which seems to have dropped down the rankings for some reason.  A pair of blue tits inspected the nesting box, but as in previous years, did not pursue their interest.

Robins have visited frequently and I noted that two of them were untypically tolerant of each others' presence.  Then it became apparent that some mating behaviour was starting and one day I suddenly spotted THREE robins on the gravel within an area just one metre square - but of course it only lasted a couple of seconds or so.

As well as the regular dunnocks, a wren has been seen twice. 

Marsh tits have been past occasional visitors - meaning literally once or twice a year - but last week one actually turned up on three days out of four.  After several attempts when it proved nervy, |I finally managed to get a reasonable photo of it on its last visit.

Marsh Tit

It hasn't been seen since, but of course that doesn't mean it hasn't been back.

Overall though, my campaign to up the level of bird sightings this winter hasn't been a great success and I'm now looking forward to the return of butterflies and bees over the coming weeks.

Which reminds me that at by this time last year, I had already seen my first red admiral.  What a difference a year makes!

Larks Not On Shore

Not too much to report from the garden.  I blame fairly or otherwise the continuing construction of a new housing estate in the middle of the village.  However I did manage to get a brief video of the long-tailed tits mobbing the suet dumplings that I've been trying to capture for some while:

Long-tailed tits

Not a bad roll call though I have had as many as seven or eight on previous occasions.  Unfortunately I couldn't get the same suet dumplings on my last trip to the supermarket, and the attempted replacements has been viewed with puzzlement by tits and corbids alike.

In fact this blue tit preferred instead to rob a few seeds from the mahonia bush.

Blue Tit

After some humming and hawing I decided after a typically abortive trip to Chopwell Woods to visit Beacon Point at Newbiggin again, where conditions yesterday were somewhat misty and rather rough.

Rough conditions

Thanks to another birder, I did this time managed to catch up with a pair of shore larks.  These however were found several hundred yards away feeding next to one of the greens on the golf course and nowhere near the shore where they were supposed to be.

Shore larks seem to be fairly confident birds and at times I had the feeling that, even at 250 metres range, this one was giving me the eye.

Shore Lark

There were again a good number of twite on the path next to the golf course, though once again I didn't make a great job of getting them in focus.

Twite

I think i might need to find out more about focal lengths.

The flock was perhaps slightly smaller than last time but feeding in exactly the same place on the path, where I gather people have been putting bird seed down.  I do hope this isn't to be regarded as cheating...

I didn't manage to catch up with the snow buntings that have visited occasionally but another bonus sighting, this time as considerable distance, was a couple of ringed plover down on the rocks.

Ringed Plover

Immediately to the left of them was this rather scruffy item, which puzzled me a good deal.

Scruffy Item

It spent most of its time trying to preen itself.  On reflection I suppose it's perhaps a juvenile oyster catcher without as yet the red beak.

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...

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.

Festive Famine

Not much to report over the Christmas period…

Having told someone I don’t see any chaffinches in my garden, one typically turned up two days later and another, a female was in the plum tree on New Year’s Day.

I spent Christmas at my son’s, where a damaged fence has been caused by a badger breaking into their garden to get at the bird food, exciting much interest from their cats. We did a short walk up Galahill where I briefly spotted a flock of bullfinches, otherwise there were several woodpigeons. 

Last Wednesday, I did a seasonal self-guided walk at Weetslade Country Park, which was quite interesting as it covers a far larger area than you see from the cycle track. We got a good view of a kestrel hovering but a visit to the bird feeder area was disappointing as the feeders were all virtually empty. You’d have thought they’d have filled them especially.

However we did get a nice view of a little egret on one of the wee ponds.

Little Egret

Later it proved there was a pair of them. There is now a nature conservation area and it is apparently possible to find otters and water voles.

The garden has continued to be a haven for tits of all four main varieties when the jackdaws aren’t around, with occasional robins, blackbirds and dunnocks.

Tits

In fact I’ve now run out of bird nuts, so quickly have they been disappearing.

A pause in the action...

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! 

Tales of the Unexpected

In anticipation of a decent plum harvest this autumn, I decided to remove the peanut feeders from the plum tree and hang them temporarily on the washing line to prevent the birds from nibbling at the ripening plums.

They took a bit of getting used to the feeders zipwiring along the washing line and I thought it would be amusing to take a photo of the new set-up in action.

By total chance what I actually got was a shot of a marsh tit sharing one feeder with a blue tit.

Marsh Tit(l) and Blue Tit

That was really quite a chance as visits from a marsh tit are particularly seldom and I didn't see one at all last year.

The loser in this adjustment was the cheeky nut-stealing squirrel who spent a couple of days trying to work out how get onto the feeder and eventually giving up after crashing through the buddleia bush a couple of times.

Last Friday I led a Naturewatch walk around Wingate Quarry Nature Reserve, which I'm pleased to say impressed those present with its variety of butterflies (once the sun got out) and abundant flora.  There weren't as many marbled white about as I had expected but there were good numbers of large and small white, common blue and small heath.  In terms of flowers, knapweed, pussy willow and ragwort but I left it to our resident experts to identify numerous rarities including fragrant orchid.

Common Blue (f)	Common Blue (m)
Marbled White	Small Heath
Small Skipper	Painted Lady

The painted lady was a bit of a bonus, the first one most of us thought we had seen this summer.

Even before the sun came out, bumblebees were plentiful, in particular red-tailed bumblebees of both genders.  I hadn't noticed the males so far this year.  Some bees had been considerably blanched by the sun during the recent hot weather.

I spotted one particularly corpulent bee which I believe was a gypsy or vestal cuckoo bee, remembering that they are hard to separate in the field.

Gypsy or Vestal Cuckoo Bee

Meanwhile there has been some interesting bird activity at home.

Young birds have fledged and a series of them have been visiting the garden with their parents to be fed.  Tits often do this and this year the blue tits have been particularly brave, regularly feeding their babies in the plum tree while I am sitting on the decking no more than three yards away.

A new development has been mother and baby woodpecker doing the same thing while I watched from the kitchen.

Woodpeckers

Then the latest was a whole family of greenfinches that turned up on the lawn, as many as five or six at one point.

Greenfinches

On a day trip to meet with family in Boroughbridge, I was interested to note that there is a day fishing ticket on the River Ure.  Someone landed what looked like a pike while we were there.  Further on we happened to see another whitethroat.

Back in the garden the foxgloves are out and attracting bumblebees.  As I suspected, these turned out to be garden bumblebees, the first I have positively identified.  They are keen on foxgloves and have long tongues to reach the pollen inside.

Whitethroat

Garden Bumblebee

This morning while making breakfast, the jay turned up in the garden again and was showing well close to the tree.  I was tempted to run for the camera but would have burned my food!

Tuesday 23rd March

The day after I last posted Mr Nuthatch was again paying fleeting visits to the bird table and I managed to provide the proof.

Nuthatch

With the weather brightening I decided to take a bike ride to Prestwick Carr the following Friday, braving a strong westerly wind in the hope of seeing the short-eared owl again.  When I arrived, the feeders by the viweing platform had been filled (apparently someone called Albert fills them) and so it was a cinch to catch up with the willow tits that use it.  Long-tailed tit and reed bunting were also about as well as the more common tits.

Willow Tit

Long-tailed Tit and Willow Tit

I rode up and down the track looking about and tried to stick it out on the platform for a while but it was very exposed to the breeze so I gave in after an hour and rode back home.

This weekend I did a slow walk around the bridle path towards Rowlands Gill, when it was again apparent that there is more birdsong there than in Chopwell Woods.  Seeing them was another thing as they were mostly high in the the treetops.  In the end I saw pretty much  what you'd expect to see - coal tit, blue tit, long-tailed tit and red kite.  Low flying red kites over the various villages have been a pretty much daily occurence locally.

More of a surprise came yesterday as I rode to Gateshead to buy fishing tackle.  Just past the Swalwell roundabout in a temperature of about 10C a butterfly flew up.  From the brief view of its underside I thought it was a peacock.  As I was half thinking I wouldnt see a butterfly before the end of March this year, I was duly pleased.

Several times I thought I had heard a greenfinch at the back of the garden and elsewhere but I haven't managed to see one.

Tuesday 22nd December

It continues to be a period when I'm seeing more activity in the garden than on my trips out.

A trip to Holywell Dene only revealed a few tits and a walk at Wallington Hall some more tits and a single nuthatch.

Long-tailed tit

However my garden nuthatch still visits the bird table often, and several long-tailed tits often appear though generally just for short raids.  Coal tits are still the most frequent visitors, ahead of blue and great tit and the larger birds.  Wren, dunnock and blackbird have all turned up plus the 'not quite right' greenfinch (see previous two posts).  The long-tailed tits have started feeding a good deal on the fatballs, which have been neglected right through the autumn period for whatever reason unless I had removed them from the feeder and put them somewhere else.

There has also been a surprising first - a goldfinch.  Although common locally, I've never seen one in the garden before.  Overall, it seems the shorter days and the need to feed intensively around the middle of the day is the main cause of the increased traffic.  

On Saturday I did take a trip to Swinsty Loch in North Yorkshire for a socially-distanced walk with daughter and fiancé with slightly better results, starting with a good view of a red kite over the village as I set off.

The walk around Swinsty Loch is advertised as a gentle stroll on a gravel path.  Unfortunately the youngsters had decided instead on a hike through the moors to Badger Dyke Loch, which unbenown to them proved to be a tour of the local swamp grounds and quite hard on both lungs and legs.

However we did happen on this couple of peacocks on the way.

Peacocks

They were wise to shelter in the little hollow as a full-scale pheasant shoot was underway at Badger Dyke Loch.  Apart from dead pheasants we managed to see several score of wigeon at the peaceful end of the water and a handful of tufted duck on the way back down the other side.  In the fields a few fieldfare and redwing were around without showing too well.

To be honest I was slightly disapponted by the wigeon as I had thought I had spotted some pochard in the group.  At least I felt well-exercised and wholly justified in not doing any exercises at home the day after.

Tuesday 28th July

Finally a bit more success in the hairstreak hunt in spite of still indifferent weather.

I managed four brief sightings in different wych elms around Bywell Bridge.  One struck me as being too dark but the other three answered the broad description and probably were white-letter hairstreaks.  The only trouble was I couldn't prove it as none of them settled and so could theoretically have been something else.

It was a similar story later in the week when I took advantage of a couple of partially summer evenings to look for purple hairstreaks in the tops of the oaks from the old railway bridges just past Hamsterley Mill.  Although not around in the same numbers as my first visit last year, I was able to identify around 10 suspects flying around different trees, discounting a couple of others as moths.  The greyish hue in flight makes me fairly certain on identification and in one case there was a momentary flash of light blue that I regard as conclusive but again none settled anywhere visited.

Spotting these species isn't an easy task.  My conclusion based on this year's attempts is that the purple hairstreak is the easier option.  My last visit to Bywell on Sunday produced nothing at all but one compensation was spotting this rather dozy looking young tawny owl on a brief woodland walk.

Tawny Owl

Similarly the trips to Hamsterley revealed a jay and some rising trout viewed from above and, on the windier day, about a dozen red kites cruising around.

A week or so after they first bloomed, the buddlieae attracted their first butterfly, a green-veined white.  Since then three small tortoiseshells have followed suit, but this one needed to warm up on the path first.

Small Tortoiseshell

Woodpeckers have been visiting daily - a female and a juvenile - and a song thrush has been around a couple of times looking for worms.  But by far the commonest small bird is the blue tit, which has clearly had an excellent breeding season.

Monday 13th July

To be honest this is a bit of a non-report, in that for a change, none of the things I was hoping for came about.

Last Wednesday I tried fishing Dissington Pond, but this time legering sweetcorn and worm feeder in the hope of bream or tench.  Conditions weren't wonderful as temperatures had dropped and the wind was from the East.  So I wasn't surprised not to catch but it did seem strange that I never got the merest touch of a bite, not even a liner.

However not much else was taken and towards the end another guy helpfully commented that the venue is 'hard work' on the feeder.  One factor I did notice was that the water is remearkably clear considering there is a farmer's field next to it. You'd have thought there might be a bit of algae around.

It went little better on Saturday when I again cycled to Stocksfield looking for white letter hairstreaks and the best I saw was another fine red admiral.  Again it really was not warm enough or sunny enough to expect much success.  I did at least take a look round the trees at Stocksfield Hall Enterprise Park and found there were a lot more elms there, some of which weren't to my inexperienced eye wych elms. So at least another area to search.

Yesterday I decided to check out Little Waters and Killingworth Lake as possible fishing venues.  Little Waters has clearly been neglected over the years and only two swims looked vaguely fishable.  The Lake is an obvious venue.  It has the reputation of being hard to fish and the most-used swims are a fair hike from the car park, inspiring me to order a tackle trolley.  I'd be interested to see how hair-rigged prawn would work as a possible novelty item, perhaps while trying for tiddlers on the short pole.

Small Tortoiseshell

No fish were taken while I was there but I did see a nice small tortoiseshell, a species that is clearly back in numbers, and managed a detour to my sister's where she showed me her impressive garden.

In my own garden there has been little new. Red admiral and green-veined white have been sighted.  A couple of visitors have become increasingly bold, namely a woodpecker, which I now think to be a juvenile, and the grey squirrel (pretty sure it's the same one) that shows increasingly little fear when I see him attacking the bird nuts. I managed to capture one such attack on the camera.  What I didn't notice at the time was the unperturbed blue tit feeding off the fatballs right nearby.

Friday 6th June

I'm not really wanting to start each post with a review of what happened in the last post but there were again a couple of flowers I didn't manage to identify last time as below:

Self Heal

Red Campion

Can't believe I didn't spot the campion. Meanwhile it does appear from internet research that there is some evidence of dwarfism in butterflies. A study on a species in Queensland showed considerable size reductions after heavy rains in 2011 and was ascribed to malnutrition.  So maybe the item I saw last time really was a minute speckled wood. It did rain quite a lot in February.

Bird visits to the garden have been on the increase.  I was particularly pleased to see a chiffchaff (presumably, since that's what I hear nearly every day) visit the bird bath, now more visible following the collapse of a small tree that obscured it. Lady Woodpecker has come to the nuts quite frequently although not staying for long. And it is once again the feeding season for baby blue tits.  I've seen as many as three demanding food from the same parent.

Bullfinch

Unfortunately there has also been an unwelcome increase in visits from the Rat family, so I somewhat reluctantly decided to cut down the carpet of garlic mustard that they sneak around in and block up all the likely entry holes into the garden. This has understandably resulted in a decrease in visits from orange tip and green-veined white butterflies. The compensation was that a pair of bullfinches turned up to pick the seeds from the remaining few plants.  And garlic mustard was nearly finished anyway.

Incidentally there was quite an interesting confrontation between a member of the Rat family and the Bad Jackdaw gang who had encircled it.  After mutual threatening gestures, the rat finally made off when a magpie decided to intervene too.

The main trip I went on last Thursday was another walk in the Spetchells with Malcolm to see if we could track down the ashy mining bee. The buffish mining bee was still around though not in the same numbers as last month and I wasn't at all surprised that there were a few red-tailed bumblebees around.

I had for a while been aware of the cuckoo mining bee but had tended to dismiss the stripey insects I've seen at Spetchells as hoverflies... until on this occasion several were sighted disappearing down various mining bee holes. Unfortunately they did this rather too quickly for me to get a snapshot but we did finally manage to catch up with a male mining bee.  It was tiny and far smaller than I'd expected.  That's cotoneaster it's on!

Red-tailed Bumblebee

Ashy Mining Bee

A slightly surprising feature was that there was the lack of any butterflies apart from a small tortoiseshell by the river. Oh and of course I managed to photograph several more flowers I couldn't immediately identify.  I did get one though - mouse-ear hawkweed.

Mouse-ear Hawkweed

We finished up by watching the numerous sand martins that nest at the Eastern end of the Spetchells mound.

The day after I was walking around the Havannah reserve with a friend when we alarmed some lapwings who flew around overhead shrieking for a while before we moved off realising they must have nested in the fields nearby. Very rare that I get snaps of birds in flight with my camera but I managed both the lapwings and the sand martins the previous day, so pleased with that even if the quality isn't much.

Sand Martins

Lapwing

I also saw a small tortoiseshell on a brief visit back to Dumfries as well as a pair of goosander and many house martins and on Tuesday the first red admiral of the year as I rode back from the Derwent Reservoir.

Lots of people were out fishing at the reservoir.  It got me thinking that I should give fishing a try again...