Tuesday 8th January

Towards the end of last week, I did a bit of a wander round locally to investigate the red kite trail a bit more and possibly check for further merlin activity, of which there was none.

It was a bit depressing to see how much litter had been dumped on the roadside verge down Spen Lane, all

Tree

things that could have been placed in a recycling bin. You can't hold out much hope for people changing their habits to save the oceans when many still think it's ok to casually dump household waste.

Anyway, what I did see was a treecreeper creeping and a couple of goldfinches, proving that they are in the area even if they don't visit my niger seed.  Then by the bridleway, I caught sight of this tree.  Too white to be a normal silver birch, I'm sure that I've come across it before and noted it in this diary.  But without any leaves showing, I was unable to re-identify it so will probably have to wait until the summer.

Reports of a sociable snow bunting on St Mary's Island led me to attempt another twitch.  In spite of scouring all the grassy areas I could find I didn't see it.  The weather was a good deal less hospitable than had been forecast so it wasn't a day for hanging around for a long period.  I was however glad that I took the trouble to go over the causeway to the lighthouse, when I happened to come across this brent goose working its way through the rocks on the foreshore.

Brent Goose

Like the snow bunting, it doesn't appear much on the west coast so I'd never seen one before I moved.

Otherwise, it was quiet on the inland pond apart from a lot of teal and mallard.  I think there were a few greenshank too, though it was hard to hold the binoculars still enough to tell in the frisky wind.  As the tide started to move in, a few others started to appear, notably a healthy flight of lapwing flying around over the sea's edge.

Saturday 16th January

Spent a few days in Northumberland, which resulted in a lengthy walk at Low Newton.  Part of the idea was to check out the nature reserve that we discovered exists behind the Ship Inn - which was probably the source of the yellow-browed warbler reported in an earlier post.

In fact the beach was the main source of action.  Spent some time watching a cormorant sitting on a pile of rocks in the first bay, wondering if it might be a shag - interesting to find on researching more today that, according to bird-x.com 'There is no clear distinction between the term "cormorant" and "shag". ' Now that I didn't know!

Some usual suspects started turning up, i.e. greenshank, redshank and sanderling.  Further out some tufted ducks were fishing and once we passed a large outcrop of rocks, I was able to identify a pair of eider ducks even further out, messing around in the surface swell - so a first sighting.

On the way back to the pub, a large number of smaller birds were messing around by the kelp brought up by storms and I figured out they were rock pipits - another first sighting! By this time I was glad I had brought the bird book along, even though my fingers got pretty cold every time I got it out.  Just heading off the beach there were a few stonechats in the dunes.  I didn't need the bird book for them, but it was nice to see them again.

Stonechat

Rock Pipit - honest!

In fact the nature reserve, which was heavily flooded so the full path couldn't be covered, didn't have much to add to this.  Apart from more 'shanks, there were some greylag geese on the far side of the pond, too far away to see if other species were among them - plus a few wigeon and a single lapwing.

By now it was getting cold and we made it to the pub.