Win some, lose some...

The siskins have continued to visit the garden.  I thought it was just a pair and so was quite surprised this week to see four of them on a feeder.  One couple however fled before my attempt to record the moment.

Also visiting, apart from a few two- and seven-spot ladybirds, have been a number of buff-tailed bumblebee queens prospecting the garden for possible nesting sights.  They were really tricky to photograph as they were either on the move or ferreting around in the undergrowth.  I thought I was about to nail it when one of them disappeared down a crevice in the decking.  I must have waited three or four minutes for it to come back into shot, which it never did.  So either it escaped by another route without me noticing or hearing, or I can expect a bumblebee nest in my decking...

In the end I had to make do with a brief video of one visitor:

Buff-tailed Bumblebee Queen

Also heard but not seen in the garden and nearby have been a few chiffchaff.

Yesterday I was out for a walk at Geltsdale with V&A together with recent arrival E, who managed to sleep through the proceedings uninterrupted.

I soon saw a curlew on approaching the car park and found a couple of stonechat on arrival.  Eventually we headed South nominally hoping to happen upon a whinchat but without much conviction.  Instead we came across numerous chaffinches and a reed bunting pair.

Stonechat

Reed Bunting

Further sightings overhead were a couple of kestrel mobbing a buzzard and a possible pink-footed goose.

The weather was quite warm so there were also a couple of butterfly sightings - both peacocks.

Having covered the likely whinchat area, we set off back via the former quarry where short-eared owls have been turning up.  We were probably an hour or two too early to be successful.  Instead there were several lapwing and on the way a very distant roe deer

Lapwing

Roe Deer

The lapwing seemed to be on the verge of proving a display flight but never quite went through with it. 

I always think the rockier sides of the quarry area look good for peregrine falcon, who would be due to nest about now, but none were seen.

On the way back we did however meet up with a decent flock of fieldfare.  They saw us and kept on the move.  Distracted by another bumblebee queen, I missed the best chance of a photo. They can't be with us for much longer this year.

Yesterday I had planned to head West to Parkhead on the bike, but the cycle path was closed and I didn't fancy the proposed hilly detour.  Instead I took a more casual trundle along the banks of the Derwent, which did produce a couple of active goosander. 

Goosander

Returning by the Tyne was less productive apart from a couple of cormorants and a brief check at the hide at Clara Vale produced nothing of note at all.

"Win some, lose some..."

A Slow Spring

We are already experiencing summery days but I have so far seen little of much interest.

About a week ago people started reporting occasional buff-tailed bumblebees and the odd butterfly.  I noticed three of the buff-tailed bumblebee queens in the garden on Monday and a couple more since but no sign yet of the red mason bees that live in the bug hotel and so far no butterflies at all.  Interestingly several records of the brimstone have been registered in the Darlington area and one as far North as Sunniside.  It would be great if one of those turned up on my travels

Again I'm regretting the lack of garlic mustard in the garden, once prolific and a food plant for the orange tip and green-veined white until I decided it was getting out of hand and uprooted virtually the whole lot.

Apart from an increase in blackbirds and robins, collar doves have been fairly frequent visitors, fleeing into the trees at the back if they caught my attention.

Collar Dove

I remember being excited when they first turned up as a mystery in our garden in Blyth in the early eighties, having only recently established a presence in the area.

A bike ride to Matfen a fortnight ago produced a sighting of a yellowhammer and hearing my first chiffchaff, which are now singing out all over the place as they do.  On several occasions I have also heard greenfinches in the tree tops but so far haven't seen one.

Perhaps the most interesting thing I did see was crawling around in the summer house rather than in the garden itself.

Green Lacewing

Nothing special and I have had lacewings before in the Spring, but I rather like them and daresay the trout in the Derwent like them too.

Spain - Day 4

Last night one of the group leaders noticed there was an egyptian grasshopper sitting on the fence outside the hotel.

Having turned down another early hours search for Dupont's Lark in even colder conditions, I took a look this morning and it hadn't moved, very large and looking like something out of a nightmare.

Egyptian Grasshopper

Today we were on the move to our second hotel in Huesca. En route we stopped at a wee lake, where a large numbers of chiffchaffs were indulging in flycatching activities from the reed beds.  You can just about see them in this video:

Chiffchaffs

I must say I've not seen them in numbers in such a location or behaving like this.  Maybe it's a European thing?

At another brief stop I got a brief spot I got a shot of a calandra lark, which would have been great if it had been polite enough to face in the right direction.

Calandra Lark

We were heading for the reserve at El Planeron by which time we could see the changed scenery looming up like a moon landscape ahead.

The Sierra

We were now 1000 metres lower than Gallocanta and the change in temperature was noticeable, also bringing large numbers of butterflies - all of them whites.

  

Once we stopped, I got a nice view of an early season small white as well as the predominant flower common stork's bill according to Google Lens..

Small White

Common Stork's Bill

On going up a hill on the other side of the road I noticed a butterfly that I thought might be a blue.  In fact what I was seeing was the greenish underwing of the bath white, which were present in good numbers though extremely mobile.  I also spotted large white at distance as did another group member.

I was wondering about the possibility of southern small white, which are definitely possible in Northern Spain but saw none.  It makes me think how lucky my sighting north of Tübingen was a couple of years back although they have now been reported in the Southern UK. 

Further along the reserve we stopped again and someone spotted an Iberian Grey Shrike far off on the other side of the road.  I didn't see it until it moved.  

The group then concentrated on a Dupont's Lark audible to the South East of us but I reckoned it was moving more to the South and headed that way along a rough track. 

Noticing a marshy area and having heard some frogs to my right I took a look and saw the (or another) Iberian Grey Shrike perched in the branches, looking like an elongated version of the great grey shrike we sometimes see at home. I carefully got the camera ready and... the only other car we saw there that session rumbled down the dirt track and flushed the shrike!

It flew around a bit and returned briefly to its obvious favourite perching area a couple of times but was obviously spooked and didn't settle.

Huesca Emblem

Meanwhile some of the group who had followed down the track caught sight of the Dupont's lark
hovering at height near some raptors and eventually diving back down.  I took two or three looks through the binocs but couldn't see a _______ thing.

Further on again there was a short-toed lark near Belchite and I was quite concerned to see this huge aggressive-looking horned creature on the horizon entering the Huesca region.

Apparently it's quite common as we saw images of several others.

Nearing the hotel, a flying raptor was identified as red rather than a black kite and I at last got an image of a raptor in flight as well as a shot of a cerin in a tree with some others.

Griffon Vulture

Cerin

Frankly I doubt if I would have identified the cerin from the photo but the photo needed tweaking as the light was pretty dodgy and it was the first one I'd seen since visiting Austria several years ago.

More of vultures later... 

Signs of Life

Nature is only progressing slowly through an extremely wet cool spell.

Reckoning I had tracked down where the mandarin ducks on the Derwent have been appearing, I took a look for them a few weeks ago without success but did manage to identify a buff-tailed bumblebee hunting for somewhere to nest,

Buff-tailed Bumblebee Queen

A few days later it was at last warm enough to sit out in the summerhouse for a while.  I didn't take a camera not expecting to see anything but one of a couple of ladybirds trapped inside proved to be a harlequin ladybird.  It looked half-dead so I put it down thinking to photograph it later but it obviously moved off while I was finishing a coffee.  Apparently they can invade buildings in large numbers.

Meanwhile a chiffchaff had turned up and settled briefly on a plant pot, so it was the only time I have seen my first chiffchaff of the year before hearing one..

Last Saturday, I took a roundabout bike ride and caught a brief glimpse of a yellowhammer.  Stopping briefly at the feeders at Weetslade Country Park, nothing special was visiting but another buff-tailed queen was milling round noisily.

However I did manage to disturb a single red admiral on my way back up Blaydon Burn - so it was my first butterfly sighting of the year (30th March).

Today I decided to visit Rainton Meadows as an identified promising area, as there were no major sightings reported elsewhere.

The ponds were a bit disappointing as views were partially obscured and the ducks as you would have expected and a good way off.  One greylag goose looked to be enjoying the sunshine at the pond's edge.

Greylag Goose

While exploring the woodland areas, and mainly getting lost, I did however come across an early bumblebee nectaring on gorse.

Early Bumblebee

There were also a couple of pleasing moments when a comma landed briefly, and another red admiral was disturbed by my passing.

Near Joe's Pond there was a bullfinch rooting in the undergrowth and, best of all on the Coalfield Path, a lovely if brief display by a singing blackcap.

A Cold Snap

The fine weather at the end of March was not to continue and occasional snowfall and hailstorms meant that summer species have since been slow to emerge.

Snow was still on the ground in patches when I cycled up to Parkhead on the Waskerley Way last weekend, naively hoping to see the odd bumblebee queen or butterfly.  Instead there were plenty of skylarks on the way plus a few lapwing in semi-display mode and a grouse was clearly audible on the moors.  One thing that was surprising is that I was sure I heard a cuckoo calling on the fringe of Consett on the way back. It seemed remarkably early although there are odd records of them turning up in late winter in Southern England.  Turning into my street at the end of the day there was a single buff-tailed bumblebee queen.

In the garden, the dunnocks have continued to help somewhat in getting rid of some of the nyger seed from the bird table and a squirrel has been taking some of the peanuts that seem to have become less popular with the birds.

Dunnock

Squirrel

The other day I thought I might have spotted my first non-bumblebee of the year but it turned out to be a hoverfly, probably a drone fly.

Drone Fly

Today was similarly quiet when I went on a bike ride to the Princess Anne Park near Washington Centre.  On the way back it perked up somewhat.  Chiffchaffs were singing everywhere and there were a small number of buff-tailed bumblebees lclearly looking for nesting sites.  At one point there were even some rather strange-looking cows wandering along the side of the track.

Cow

A Frantic Fortnight of Frustrating Photography

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.

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

There was another peacock and a small tortoiseshell, a large white (probable), a kestrel and a buzzard.

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!

Robin

Stonechat

Yesterday I took a quick walk in Chopwell Woods in the hope of seeing a few bumblebees.  One almost flew into me as I went out the door but there wasn't much doing in the Woods apart from another surprise small tortoiseshell at 10C.  As I turned for home more bumblebee queens did start to appear.  Several buff-tailed queens were not keen to settle and a suspected early bumblebee queen on some carnations and a possible garden bumblebee couldn't be confirmed.

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.

Small Tortoiseshell

Tree Bumblebee

Tuesday 20th April

Activity has understandably perked up as the night frosts gradually disappear.

I celebrated the opening of non-essential retail on the (glorious?) 12th by cycling to the Metrocentre and saw two goosander on the Derwent and a clear view of a chiffchaff near the Tyne but was too cold to linger.  On the same chilly day it was quite a surprise to see a green-veined white settle briefly in the garden as well as a single peacock.  Subsequent days lead to a couple of flypasts from orange tips.

On the Wednesday a walk to Chopwell Woods at least produced a good deal more birdsong and we returned to increased bee activity in the garden, which I investigated further.  Apart from the expected tree bumble bee queen, there were what I thought were honeybees and something a good deal smaller that proved to be a female buffish mining bee.  Fortuitously I had recently learned about beeflies and there have been a few visit from the dark-edged beefly.  More recently, a buff-tailed bumblebee queens have turned up too.  There's been a couple of ladybirds too but nothing spectacular.

Honey Bee (worker)

Female Buffish Mining Bee

Buff-tailed Bumblebee Queen

Dark-edged Beefly

Tree Bumblebee Queen

On Thursday three of us did a bike ride from Weetslade to Matfen and back and there was a good number of small tortoiseshells on the wing, notably on the rough track just West of Darras Hall.

Up to this point I hadn't managed to snap any of the butterflies and it was a bit of a surprise when a speckled wood in the garden was my first subject of the year on Friday.  I'd have thought it was a bit early.  None of the other butterflies observed settled for any length of time.

Speckled Wood

Following a resolution to head South more often, I took a walk in Edmondsley Wood on Monday.  It was a very pleasant stroll long an enlarged burn that you repeatedly had to cross by stepping on rocks.  I disturbed the same heron repeatedly as I moved along but couldn't see any sign of fish in the very clear water.

More buff-tailed bumblebee queens were looking for places to nest, and the odd white butterfly began to appear.  When I settled to have something to eat, they also started to settle and I could see that they were green-veined whites.  I would estimate well over a dozen overall, plus a single peacock.

Green-veined White

There was a bit of birdlife high up in the trees and I thought I might have heard willow warblers calling.  On the way back a couple of courting goldfinches largely ignored me.

Incidentally thanks are due to Charlotte Rankin of the Natural History Society of Northumberland  for help with a couple of the bee identifications.

Thursday 1st April

A lurch into warmer weather has produced an increased level of sightings. 

The day after I last posted, we ventured on a fishing trip to Milkhope Loch on 24th March.  As I was parking the car I heard my first chaffinch of the year.  On a reasonably bright day, Malcolm managed to catch six small roach, although to be honest tiny in most cases.  The first one actually looked more like a rudd but wasn't retained. I stuck out for carp on ledger and short pole with bacon grill baits and had nothing more than a couple of sharp, bait stealing bites on the pole which I attributed to ide but it was more about catching something on this first visit.

On Tuesday this week I went back alone to Milkhope to use up the maggots and again had no trouble picking up small and tiny roach.  I switched to sweetcorn near in on the waggler after lunch in the hope of better things.  One large fish did move through the swim but otherwise it was just tiddlers failing to take the bait.

Bites were continuing on the feeder and the maggots were constantly getting sucked.  So I decided to fine down the tackle, which produced a skimmer bream as well as a couple more roach.  Then just before five I hooked into a much bigger fish which fought well for four or five minutes before snapping the 1lb 14 oz bs line just below the feeder.  Very frustrating as I didn't get a decent view of it, and probably underestimated how heavy it was.

It wasn't much of a consolation that I got a friendly visit from a greylag goose that also ate my apple core.  By this time chiffchaffs were calling all around.

Greylag Goose

Buffish Mining Bee

Previously I spent a windy Sunday afternoon at the Spetchells to see if the mining bees were active and ideally identify the rarer ones.  There were a few dozen buffish mining bees around as well as some garden and red-tailed bumblebee queens.  However I didn't catch up with ashy or tawny mining bee and there was no sign either of the sandmartins over the river yet.  Rather surprisingly, I did see a couple ofunidentified butterflies in an area of trees with dark bark and I wondered if they'd hibernated there.  On the way back along the river a kestrel hovered  enticingly.

Meanwhile I did finally manage to spot a greenfinch high up in a tree at the back of the house.  Stretching the capabilities of the camera, I got a shot which just about showed up the large beak and yellow stripe.

Greenfinch

Yesterday I did a bike run up to Lygett's Junction and a couple of miles up the Waskerley Way.  In considerably sunnier weather, there were quite a few butterflies on the wing.  I wasn't convinced they were all peacocks and red admirals either, too brown and, as I thought not quite right for small tortoiseshells either.  

Skylark

Just past Consett there were a lot of skylarks singing above a meadow and one of them was obliging enough to let forth from the fence of a nearby estate.  Again more of a silhouette but it's rare to get a skylark in the camera lense.

By the time I headed home butterflies were starting to settle in the sun and I caught sight of two peacocks and two red admirals, but none of them were inclined to linger when I appeared.

The extra two miles were worth it though, as there was a chance encounter with an early bumblebee queen as I took a quick break at the halfway stage.

Early Bumblebee Queen

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...

Thursday 23rd April

 A fellow member from the Prudhoe U3A Naturewatch group thinks that the speckled wood I saw last week (see previous post) may have been variant specimen.  I did consider this possibility on writing the entry but dismissed it as far-fetched.

As it happens I saw my second speckled wood of the year on a bike/hike trip to the Spetchells two days ago.

Somewhat More Speckled Wood

Here we can see that, while the speckles are pretty much 'out', some are still not as clear as the others.  Assuming this one has been on the wing slightly longer than last week's, I'm still inclined to think that it's a case of more colour showing up with wear as happens with some bird species. It would be nice to see what an expert says though.

The main reason I went to the Spetchells was in the hope of seeing an ashy mining bee as I've started doing a bit of bee recording for the North East Bee Hunt  There weren't any but there were rather lot of buffish mining bees...

It was like that pretty much everywhere, including the odd one that landed on my scruffy trainers.  They weren't aggressive except towards the odd buff-tailed bumblebee that occasionally turned up. I'm glad I didn't have to count them as my nearest estimate would have been in the range 10,000 - 1,000,000!

On the way back I also finally managed to get a snap of one of this year's chiffchaffs in full song. 

Chiffchaff singing chiff-chaff

The same thing happened last year. I heard loads before I actually saw one to photograph.

There were also a few butterflies by the Tyne, including one small tortoiseshell where I saw several last August.

In the garden, there have been one or two tree sparrow appearances plus also a lot of orange tips and the odd peacock and a few other whites that tantalisingly won't settle.  It's also clear that the dunnocks have mated successfully and I suspect a pair of blackbirds have too, having several times seen the male entering a gap in the conifer hedge looking somewhat furtive.

Tuesday 31st March

A week ago today I got out for a bike ride from Matfen to Bellingham (or Wark as it turned out) not realising that driving in order to take exercise would shortly be expressly forbidden.

Almost as soon as I left Matfen, there was a nice view of a kestrel.  On the way up to Ryal a few butterflies were settling on some yellow colt's foot type flowers and I managed to identify my first small tortoiseshell of the year.  There were several other butterflies around during the rest of week, even on the cooler days, including in the garden, but all were on the wing and frustratingly impossible to identify positively.

Heading towards the moors it was actually possible to observe rather than just hear some skylarks in action and in the wooded areas chiffchaffs were now established and singing strongly. Somewhere around Throckrington some meadow pipits appeared and I briefly saw a falcon with a red chest and pointed wings in flight.  Not a good sighting, but I reckoned it was probably a male merlin - they like meadow pipits!

I decided to return by a slightly less arduous route but it was nice to see a yellowhammer in the hedgerows on the way back to Matfen - and an incidental buzzard.

A walk round Chopwell Woods a couple of days afterwards produced nothing but a robin begging for scraps and a pair of unidentified spiralling butterflies, so on Saturday I took the bike along the Tyne from Wylam. There were a pair of tufted ducks and a pair of wigeon on Bardley Pond - not bad for a smallish venue.

Going along the river was pleasant if not very eventful, but I did catch sight of some dozen or so ducks heading upstream past Ryton Golf Course.  Unfortunately the path was narrow and there were a lot of people around making it inadvisable to stop at the current time and the view was party obstructed by tree branches and twigs. I reckoned they might be goosanders, but if so it was a little strange as they all had brown beaks and so must have been females.

Going past the new housing towards Blaydon, there was a smart-looking great-crested grebe, which took me a bit by surprise as I've only seen them on lakes before.

Another legal cycle trip to Matfen produced little apart from lots of singing skylarks - and another stray buzzard.

I managed to get through all of this without getting a decent wildlife photo.  But I did take one of this green fly on the rather mucky window of my summerhouse. I'm not sure what it is but it reminded me of a fishing fly called Greenwell's Glory, meaning it might be some kind of olive - or maybe a lacewing?

Mystery green fly