Out and About

Last Wednesday I took a trip to the Tees Estuary hoping I might be in with a chance of catching up with a couple of rarities - the glossy ibis and the small blue butterfly. In the event I was successful with neither but still found a few things to catch my interest.

Starting at Saltholme RSPB I headed initially to Paddy's Pond, having found the pollinator garden virtually free of pollinators.  Here the view was largely dominated by a huge number of black-headed gulls with just a few pochard and shovelers for a little variety.  Turning back afterwards however, I did start to see some butterflies and was pleasantly surprised to find, on a path interestingly marked "Wrong Way", my first wall brown of this year.

Not sure how I missed it earlier, but I then immediately happened upon a nice area of banked flower meadow where there was another first of season sighting - at least 15 common blues, all but one of them male.

Wall Brown

Common Blue

A couple of orange-brown butterflies passing over the same area couldn't be identified.

The common blue turned up at several points as I wandered around the site but only one other female appeared.

Adjourning for lunch in the café, I was able to observe some common (I think) terns hovering to hunt insects from the surface of the water, the view occasionally interrupted by hunting sand martins from a man-made nesting wall. 

Tern hovering...then diving

Unfortunately I didn't manage to film one of the terns actually splashing into the water.

Here again there were a few pochards and shovelers.

Pochard

Next destination was the Fire Station Pond, which was where the glossy ibis had been reported. However I knew the chances of seeing were slim as the last sighting noted on the whiteboards was a few days earlier on 21st May, after having appeared fairly consistently for some while beforehand.

What I did see was two juvenile and one mature avocet and still more shovelers. Simply because it was so big and placid, I finally persuaded myself to photograph the single black-headed gull.

Young Avocets

Female Shoveler

Black-headed Gull

It seems I forgot to get one of the male shoveler.  A bigger miss however was a flyover by a marsh harrier which was too brief to do much about.

Next I drove to nearby Dorman's Pool, the possible site for the small blue.  Being unfamiliar with the site though, I made the error of following the signs to the hide, which turned out not to be the right place at all and only resulted in me seeing a damselfly.

Azure Damselfy?

A more promising area proved to be the walk along the private road and North towards the viewpoint.  here there was some kidney vetch, the larval food plant for the small blue, though much more bird's foot trefoil and hence several more common blue, this time including several females.

Female Common Blue

There was another wall brown and, noticeably scarcer this year, a speckled wood as well as - so hard to find last year but hard to avoid this - a single dingy skipper.

Speckled Wood

Dingy Skipper

It was more than a little frustrating that, with other things to do, I ran out of time to complete the whole of the path. So no small blue but hopefully I'll start looking in the right place next time!

Dazed and Confused

Eventually the weather had to perk up, resulting in an increase in activity both in the garden and elsewhere.

One of the first signs of this about ten days ago was finding a large number of nomad bees swarming around my forget-me-nots.  I've never seen so many together and hardly any were actually settling, so a bit of a scunner.

I was fairly comfortable identifying Gooden's nomad bee and in subsequent days reckoned I'd identified male and female Panzer's nomad bees, one of which also turned up (I think) at Bolam Lake on Friday.

Gooden's Nomad Bee

Panzer's Nomad bee

The presumed female I caught in a bug box at home had entirely red and black bands on the underside, which tallied with a photo on the internet.

Then much more recently, this item turned up and also fell victim to brief imprisonment the bug box.

Nomad Bee

For reasons that are hard to define too closely, I'm not convinced that this is a panzer's.  Perhaps it's a bit too large, particularly in the thorax area.  So I started to wonder about flavous nomad as the nearest alternative but a bit of research show's that Marsham's and Kirkby's nomad bees are possible locally.  So I'm now unsure about nomad bees with any red markings...

Also, as there are so many nomad bees, where are the mining bees they predate?

Also confusing has been the continuing lack of butterflies settling in the garden. The couple that have were both green-veined whites but I had to take a bike trip along the Tyne before I could get a snap of an orange tip - a rather bedraggled female.

Green-veined White

Orange Tip

Now orange tips are everywhere including five in the garden yesterday, but still not settling or only briefly.

One clear certainty is that the red mason bee is back in big numbers and the wee bug hotel (more like a bug B&B really) is doing a roaring trade.

Red Mason Bees

I was also fairly confident of identifying a Hawthorn Mining |Bee at Bolam Lake...

Hawthorn Mining Bee

... unless it's Gwynne's Mining Bee, or something completely different?

For a few days now, I've puzzled over this small bee that landed on a californian poppy:

Chocolate Mining Bee

After careful consideration, I think chocolate mining bee.  I saw one last year I believe.

And again on bees, I definitely saw a garden bumblebee the other day.

Garden Bumblebee

Okay the tail looks a bit weird but I got a really good look at the double stripe around the waist.  You can just about make it out.

Lastly on a quick tour of a few lakes in Northumberland, it really looked like our small group was not going to see anything beyond standards like tufted duck, canada goose, common tern and great crested grebe.

Great Crested Grebe

Common Tern

Then, just as I was turning to go back to the car, someone someone spotted on osprey flying close overhead with a large fish between its claws.

Dazed and confused indeed!

Monday 30th April

There have been some interesting appearances on the bird feeders to be noted and recently we have had jackdaw and male woodpecker.

Furtive Jackdaw

Male Woodpecker

I think this pretty much completes the photo sequence of regular visitors apart from wood pigeon who I haven't bothered with and magpie who takes fright as soon as I reach for the camera.

Over the past weeks I have been out a few times and the accent has been on nature walks and botany.  The only bike ride was last Thursday when I took a look around Gibside followed by a fairly chaotic attempt to cycle back home via Track 14 and Chopwell Woods.

For an estate Gibside has obvious potential and I did see my first willow warbler by the cycle track and the first of several plants I couldnt identify in Chopwell Woods, plus of course the inevitable grey squirrel.

On Friday I went on the Prudhoe U3A walk in Whittle Dene with no idea what to expect. It turns out the area is an ancestral forest and the botanical experts in the group could point out several specialised flowers and trees, notably wood avens, marsh marigold, spindle, wood anenome and opposite-leaved golden saxifrage.  Frankly I was well out of my depth but absorbing at least some of this knowledge and appreciating the at times stunning scenery made for a rich experience.

Wood Anenome

Wood Avens

I did however spot a lone small tortoiseshell and managed to identify the song of a small group of blackcaps that obligingly showed themselves shortly afterwards.  My other observation was that there were no fish to be seen in the burn - hopefully not another sign of successful otter preservation. It was also good to learn that one of the plants we saw (garlic mustard) occurs in my new garden and is a food plant for the orange tip caterpillar.

On Saturday, my sister and I attended a supposed drop in at Gosforth Park Nature Reserve, except that the guy who was hosting it seemed a bit surprised that anyone turned up.

On the way to Hide 2 we had good views of at least one sparrowhawk moving through the trees, saw a couple of overflying waders (common sandpipers??) and heard what we thought to be a sedge warbler.

On the lake itself there wasn't too much happening but I enjoyed watching the antics of a couple of common terns performing acrobatics and swooping to (presumably) catch flies just above the water's surface.  Amongst the commoner inhabitants (little grebe, black-headed gull, shoveler, canada goose, tufted duck) one greylag posed nicely right in front of the hide.

Greylag Goose

Friday 21st August

This is a bit of a catch up on miscellaneous happenings over the past ten days.

Grey alders?

Bike rides haven't produced much except a few close ups of kites and jays, partly because I've been more focussed on the exercise part more than the nature part. Did manage some nice weather for an extended run through the Glemkilns, during which I took a break by the reservoir dtream and spent a happy half an hour feeding bits of orange pith to the minnows. Surprisingly some of it got eaten. There was also a tree spot.  I took this group of trees to be alders but of course the bark is too smooth for a common alder - possibly grey alders?

The day after I took a walk on at the south end of Mabie Forest, mainly looking for butterflies.  Once again the tally was disappointingly small - a few ringlets, meadow browns and a solitary couple of common blues, none of which were keen to settle.  Everyone seems to agree it's a bad year for butterflies. Instead I took a few photos of the flowers I saw but couldn't readily identify.


Now I'm pretty new to this wild flower stuff. I suppose the yellow one in the first snap is some kind of vetch or trefoil (bird's foot trefoil?), otherwise a bit bemused. The main lesson here is that I need to take the photos closer up as it's necessary to see clearly what the leaves and stems are like as well.

A similar experience this week, when I couldn't get very far identifying wading birds at Warkworth without my better binoculars.  Got as far as identifying cormorant, oystercatcher and some common terns that were taking small fry in the shallows.  But the apparent golden plover on the edge of the rocks at the Amble breakwater presumably couldn't have been.  And wasn't sure about the fluffy-looking starling lookalikes on the rocks. Let alone the small waders running across the sand at high speed.

Still lots to see and lots to learn...