In the meanwhile...

Reed Bunting

I haven't done any major butterfly expeditions but I did do a recce of the Cambois area to check out possible sites for the grayling - more hopefully anon.

On the way by bike I noted a bird singing very tunefully from the top of a small tree and wasn't sure what it was.  It turned out to be male reed bunting but I've never heard them sing so beautifully.  Maybe like the dunnock it only happens at key times of the year.

It was just on reviewing the photo I could actually identify it.

The only other trip out was a quick visit to Marden Quarry as I happened to be in the area and had heard there had been some sightings of a night heron there.

Anyway I did a circuit of the lake and didn't see anything of note.  So I sat on a bench near the car park overlooking the lake for a rest.  After a while I looked from my phone to notice... a grey heron squatting behind some flowers on the island opposite.

Grey Heron

At distance I briefly thought I might have hit the jackpot due partly to the untypical hunched-up pose.  My sense is that this is also a young bird with its whitish appearance and streaked breast.

One great advantage of having buddleia rather unnaturally in pots at the front garden is that they regularly attract an early season small tortoiseshell.  It was again the case this year, the second butterfly to be seen on them.

Meanwhile the larger bushes at the back are out and have attracted peacocks and red admirals but not a single small tortoiseshell.  The time was when they would I'm sure have been the most numerous visitor but clearly they are in decline and have been for a long while.

On the other hand commas have often been in evidence as have all three species of white, although the weather has been inconsistent and some times were much more productive than others..  

Comma

But possibly the most interesting sighting was a single meadow brown - obviously a more than common species but not one I've ever seen on buddleia.

The whites have also been showing a great deal of interest in the garlic mustard, fluttering around it and other plants slowly and landing frequently.  I think they may be females attempting to oviposit.  This is an example of the sort of behaviour I mean.

Green-veined White

Lastly a pleasant surprise one morning was to open my garage and find that a tiny moth was completing a sleepover on my rear windscreen.

Plumed Moth

It's the first time I've ever spotted one.

A Good Decision

While writing up my sightings in Spain, I had a couple of sightings South of the Derwent.

On my way to the Metrocentre, about half a dozen roe deer crossed the Derwent Walk a hundred yards ahead of me, including two fawns perhaps suggesting that they are becoming more numerous, as I suppose tends to happen with deer.

I couldn't believe my ears after collecting my first hearing aid at Shotley Bridge on Friday, but then I couldn't believe my eyes either when I saw this heron above the road on the way home:

Grey Heron

Now I'd heard of Leonard Cohen's "Bird on a Wire" but a heron on a wire was total news to me.  I gather the fishing on the B6310 isn't much good these days unfortunately.

Lapwing

My plan on Sunday was to do a long cycle ride to the coast given the forecast of long hours of sunshine.  When the latter had not materialised by 10.30 am I decided to do a few jobs in the garden then spend a couple of hours at Shotton Pools near Northumberlandia, where there have been a few sightings recently.

The whole area was alive with skylarks singing their heads off and there were a good few lapwings around. 

A couple of cheps told me a tundra bean goose had been sighted with some pink-footed geese in the fields.  

I reckoned I managed to see it.  They'd all disappeared briefly and I was quite surprised when they showed up again that I could pick them out at distance with the naked eye, so I had a go at getting a group shot, with the impromptu intervention of a couple of hares. 

Tundra Bean Goose(l), Pink-footed Goose with hares

My bird handbook points out the elongated neck on the bean goose.  It should really show a black tip to the beak but maybe it's not apparent at several hundred yards range.

Avocets have been turning up in Northumberland for a fair while but today I counted six and there were probably a few more, so that was new.

Avocet

A very graceful bird...

On the way back to Northumberlandia, one or two of the lapwings were starting to rehearse their display flight and call.  I didn't manage to capture this example very well, but it was easier than trying to keep up with all the skylarks.

Lapwing rehearsal

One that I didn't catch up with was the white-fronted goose but I saw them once before at Loch Ken.  

All in all I had taken a good decision. 

Low Force and High Force Wind

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. 

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.

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.

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.

Shelduck

Redshank

I've always liked shelduck.

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.

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

Lapwing

Shoveler

Unsurprisingly no butterflies were seen.

Spring In the Air

 It's gradually getting a bit warmer, in spite or because of gale force storms which have made conditions rather unpredictable.  At least there has been no snow like there was last February to March.

Just over two weeks ago I took a bike ride to Matfen.  There were a couple of clusters of bullfinches working the trees but not a great deal else.

The Friday afterwards, I visited Gosforth Nature Reserve for the first time in ages.  Again the winds were approaching gale force and there was a remarkable lack of ducks and geese on the lake.  From the second hide I did manage a couple of possibly flirtatious herons and thought I saw some lapwings flying by in the distance.

In fact the main thing I saw in this area was actually well outside the reserve - a little egret that I managed to focus on several hundred yards away on the Gosforth Subsidence Pond.

Little Egret

On circumnavigating the western end of the lake there were some very dark shapes to be picked out that looked to be shovellers but it was impossible to pick out the colouration.

Just beyond that point, my attention was drawn to an area of undergrowth by some fallen trees.  I thought I could pick out the odd flash of red and I was wondering about brambling.  Eventually I got a clear view of a redwing through the binoculars.  When I tried to sneak nearer for a closer look, about forty or fifty of them went up where I would have guessed there to be about half a dozen.  It was quite pleasing though, as they were the first redwings I've seen all winter.

This Monday, there was supposed to be a Naturewatch trip to Big Waters, which was cancelled due to bad weather.  Noticing however that conditions were improving by lunchtime and that an Iceland Gull had been sighted there the day before, I decided to go along anyway.

Unfortunately the hides were locked but I was soon greeted by a flypast of a hundred or so lapwings, one or two of which showed signs of wanting to practice their mating display flight..

Most were sharing a nearby rock with some oystercatchers and every now and again, they would go up once more.

Lapwings

Further on there was another group of male and female bullfinches who might have been consorting but at the moment were more intent on demolishing a few buds.

Bullfinch

It's always tricky getting shots of them when they're foraging high in the bushes.  Ironically, another male showed up in the trees at the bottom of my garden the day after and posed beautifully - but I was upstairs at the time and didn't have the camera to hand.

 

At the West end of the pond I spent some time peering at the feeders behind the hide and picked up brief a sighting of a siskin, the first I've seen in a long time.  Unfortunately it didn't stay and didn't return.

On the lake there was a large squadron of greylags and another of canada geese, as well as a smaller group of wigeon, as on our last visit.

Wigeon

Out for the Ducks

Last weekend during the storms I was convinced I'd seen a white butterfly flattering past my front hedge.  The temperature was 11C but there is no evidence to suggest any whites appear in January so I guess it must have been a leaf.  There have been no surprises on the feeders apart from a female nuthatch turning up on the suet nuggets.  Nuthatches have not been seen here for a while.

One thing that did "turn up" was an explanation for the burrowings in my plant pots and for the fact I occasionally find an acorn or an oak sapling in them.

Grey Squirrel

Malcolm and I decided on a walk from Amble Dunes to East Chevington, which should have produced more interesting bird sightings.  The main thing saw was this dead ray, which I think may be a cuckoo ray although rays are not exactly a speciality with me and the spots have faded.  

Cuckoo Ray

I was expecting a lot of stonechats at least but all we actually got was a heron just south of Druridge, a couple of passing goldeneye as East Chevington Pond and some usual wader suspects as the tide went down on the way back.  

However I was pleased to manage as much as nine miles with the aid of my long-neglected walking sticks and very much enjoyed the concluding ice cream at Amble!

A recent bike ride only produced some audible skylarks and a fleeting bullfinch.

Sometimes the answer lies nearer home and a quickish visit to Killingworth Lake to check out the ducks yesterday proved more successful.  The main interest was reports of scaup and I did manage to see a few although it was hard to distinguish between the juveniles and the many young tufted ducks.  It was also nice to see some pochard again and get a close-up of a male goldeneye.

Pochard

Goldeneye

Scaup

At Killingworth the gulls, ducks, geese and swans are often found close to the bank at the West end because of the number of people who feed them.  Whether this is a good idea is another thing.

An Exciting Couple of Weeks

The good weather broke through in the middle of July and I have been taking full advantage by getting out as much as possible.  I'll start at the beginning...

On the 15th Malcolm and I did a fishing trip to Milkhope Pond, determined to put some fish on the bank after our previous blank at Brenkley.  The tactic was to scale down the tackle but using baits that would be big enough to put off the tiddlers.  In the end we had four skimmers and two roach, all from the margins on legered sweetcorn and no tiddlers - but no carp either.

The day after we linked up again for a dog walk through the meadows by the River Aln.  Early sightings of a small skipper and a burnet moth promised much but otherwise ringlet and meadow brown predominated.

Small Skipper

On the Saturday I took part in a bee hunt at Watergate Park organised by the Natural History Society's expert thanks to whom we were able to identify amongst others a vestal/gypsy cuckoo bumble bee (which I fortuitously came across), furrow bee (minute) and male buff-tailed bumblebee.

On the side I also noted a marmalade hoverfly and a shaded broad bar moth as well as several more small skippers, which seem to be very common this year and were to appear at further venues.

Marmalade Hoverfly

Shaded Broad Bar

This Monday I was out hunting hairstreaks and for about the fourth time visited Bywell Bridge only to find overcast weather and little sign of activity in the elms.  By contrast an evening visit to the viaducts at Hamsterley Mill provided two or three strong but fleeting purple hairstreak suspects.  Probably too early though for them to be on the wing in large numbers.

After taking part in a walking cricket session (yes it's come to that!) I went to Wingate Quarry around Tuesday lunchtime hoping to see a marbled white at the only site in Northern England where they are present.  I must have seen approaching 100!  Introduced in the hope that they would spread, they seem to be very happy where they are.  

Marbled White

Also sighted in this very scenic setting were good numbers of small heath, small skipper, common blue (though only 2-3 females) and burnet moth as well as the inevitable ringlet and meadow brown, large numbers of red-tailed bumblebee and I think a white-tailed bumblebee.

Female Common Blue

White-tailed Bumblebee

Perhaps more significant was this latticed heath moth, which I believe is somewhat scarce.  However, I see that I also have a less good photo of one at Watergate Park too.

Latticed Heath

The day after I set off late in the evening to go on a nightjar watch near Slaley.  Nightjars are rare in Northumberland but we managed half a dozen fleeting sightings as the darkness encroached and heard a fair bit of churring.  The most impressive bit was watching one hunting and returning to the same dead tree. There were plenty of toads and midges around plus an orange underwing moth but only one bat.

Thursday was nominally a day off but I couldn't resist this heron fishing on the edge of the marina at North Shields.

Grey Heron

On Friday I was back on the hairstreak trail again, this time with almost completely opposite results.  After some delay I arrived at Bywell Bridge going on on 1.00 pm, having spotted my first red admiral for several weeks on the way.

This time the sun was out and after a few minutes I started to notice suspicious activity in the elm tree at the north-eastern corner of the bridge.  It wasn't too long before I got a positive identification of my first ever white-letter hairstreak.  In the course of the next hour I must have seen 20-30 individuals, coming in little flurries and briefly settling on the tree leaves.  Rather contradicting the advice I had read on the West Sussex Butterfly Conservation site, they were mainly on the sunny side of the tree and not totally out of the wind, which I have however noticed is pretty variable in this location.

White Letter Hairstreak

By contrast my evening visit to Hamsterley came to an abrupt end after sighting just one suspected purple hairstreak when the cloud moved in and obscured the setting sun.

The weather is closing in again so I may not have so much to report over the next few days!

Monday 8th March

Recent paucity of nature news can be blamed on poorish weather and continuing lockdown, hopefully better is soon to follow.

A slightly bright nore has been offered by several appearances of a male nuthatch in the garden and, on one sole occasion that of a woodpecker.  Yesterday I planted some wild flower seeds at the back of the garden as it is only now that frosty nights are starting to look less likely.  Part of the thinking here is that the copious amount of garlic mustard that used to grow in the same area hsn't yet appeared.  Maybe I was too radical when knocking it back last summer.

I've done a couple more walks in Chopwell Woods, whose main success lay in finding further routes that avoid the heavily-used car park and ice-cream van.  During the first one, there was at least some birdsong to be heard and evidence of jays in the trees, but that was all apart from a grey squirrel, the odd robin and a single wren.  Last week the second one was a return to the baffling near total absence of birds.  I can't understand it.  You'd think among so many trees there'd be treecreepers and even a crossbill or two.

One thing I did come across on the way in was a heron on nearby farmland.  This evokes the question I wondered about often in Dumfries.  Why do herons visit farmland in winter - to seek out worms and insects or because of fishmeal compost?

Heron

This one is obviously next to some flooded land but I can't imagine it would hold fish and it seems to be looking elsewhere.

More interesting was a visit with Malcolm to check out some of the lakes maintained by Wansbeck and Cramlington Angling Club during a brief warmer spell.  Walking up to Milkope Lake there were a good number of skylarks in the fields.  They were flying low in pairs rather than soaring alone and it looked like this was some sort of pre-mating activity.  On actually reaching the pond, a good number of people were fishing and catching small stuff.

On Horton Lake nearby, one elderly angler took about half an hour to land a near 6lb bream on fine pole tackle and a visit to Brenkley Lake established that it had recently produced a 19lb carp.  We've taken out membership and I hope to report on some fishing activity before the end of the month.  I had wondered if it would soon get warm enough for butterflies to be seen early but the weather quickly deteriorated over the weekend

A bike ride the Monday after started in mist temperatures of 3C rather than the anticipated 9C but at least led to the sighting of a group of tree sparrows huddling in a tree,  I was out riding again today in warmer but windy weather and did get a closer than usual view of some tufted ducks at Bradley Pond on the way home.

Tufted Ducks

Thursday 26th November

The coal tits continue to raid the bird table in numbers and the robin tries in vain to chase them off.  They are very agile and quick and flight and have become a bit of a favourite.

On Wednesday I followed the twitchers again to see if I could get a decent view of the crossbills at Rising Sun Country Park  Not knowing where they were, I followed the Brown Trail and looked out for conifers,

A slight diversion to a small pond just South of the car park revealed four or five gadwall at closer range than the ones I saw at Holywell but shortly after I met a couple of birdwatchers who said they had found the twitchers but the crossbills had disappeared.  I thought they meant permanently.

Gadwall

However I continued with Plan A, figuring that there seemed to be a good deal of conifers around so that the crossbills may just have been displaced to a slightly different area of the park.

So I walked on not seeing anything of note apart from a couple of suspected fieldfare/redwing until near the end of the path I encountered the twitchers who told me that the crossbills had been there until about three hours ago when a sparrowhawk flushed them and they hadn't been back since.

I decided to come back another day and was heading dor the car park when I saw a chap with binoculars peering into some deciduous trees at the edge of a farm field.  Sure enough it was the crossbills warily edging along the woodland border.  

Crossbill

It was a typical lucky encounter - the right bird on the wrong kind of tree in the wrong location.  Having a last minute success when I had effectively given up looking is however something that has happened to me quite a number of times now.

Yesterday we did another joint bike ride in the Mitford area.  I was just relating the story of having spotted a heron at the top of a tree and failing to photograph it when we saw a heron at the top of a tree in exactly the same place.  Once again it made off when the camera came out.  

Averaging 10.3 mph we didn't notice much more until a lot of honking near Dinnington revealed the presence of a large number of geese in a field.  I took a couple of photos to check for pink-footed geese but it seems they were all greylags.

Saturday 14th March

After various delays and some help on location from a fellow birdwatcher, I made a successful second attempt to track down the Middleton crane.

On the way down to the river, all I spotted was a good cluster of tree sparrows in the hedgerow to add to the heard but not seen skylarks above.

After scouring around the fields along the Wansbeck to the West of the village, I turned tail and headed east along the North bank,  A few hundred yards along from the wooden bridge there was what looked like an old wildfowling area on the other side of the river.  I thought I heard a sort of croaking noise from the area and was saying something aloud about not knowing what a crane's call was like when it was flushed out from behind the reeds and flew off further East at some speed.

Unfortunately it settled at some way away from the far bank so that after a good initial view, I could only get a couple of distant shots once I caught up.  Then it flushed again and I was momentarily surprised to see that there were two birds.  For a moment I thought it was two cranes, which really would have been something as only one wintering juvenile bird has been reported. However it was apparent that the lead bird was in fact a grey heron, the crane as if in pursuit of it from behind.

Common crane

Crane pursues Heron

This concludes a rather fruitful week.  The treecreeper recently observed in the oak tree out the back paid a visit to the mahonia and, after giving it a work over, did the same on the back fence.  There has also been a sighting of a small brown mouse picking up left over bird food, a brief visit from a chaffinch (not particularly common here) and a quick sighting of a jay on the lane near the old school. And there was a kestrel hovering on the way back to Ponteland today..

Canal du Midi Part 3

On the way back from an early visit to the market at Narbonne with some local honey, I encountered a chap fishing in the Canal de la Robine for zander with a spinner.

Today's run to Beziers involved various detours, one of which was self-inflicted as I took a wrong turning. A planned one took me past an old abbey which I wasn't much impressed with but I did see a lesser kestrel (apparently they nest on the abbey) hovering nicely above some scrub on the way, before it moved off to become a silhouette on the horizon.  It's frankly astounding to think that this was the only bird of prey the whole week. I checked the abbey for ravens but only saw crows and jackdaws, just like home.  One or two other birds were seen briefly but, as on other days, were quick to take flight.

Finally rejoining the Canal du Midi at Capestang, the weather was windy and the scenery much of a muchness.  There were no butterflies I hadn't already seen though this clouded yellow (below) is pretty interesting in comparison to the paler version seen on the first day.  Stopping at one point to feed the tiddlers with breadcrumbs, a couple of dragonflies turned up and I was particularly impressed by one that turned out to be a violet dropwing.

Clouded Yellow

Violet Dropwing

The last stretch to Beziers was quite tiring and the excellent ice cream sundae I found at one of the canalside harbours held my attention more than any further wildlife events.

Canal du Midi near Beziers

The last day of cycling was a tour almost to the canal estuary, and then through marshland areas near the western tip of the Camargue.  Flamingos and all kinds of birdlife were promised in the tour guide, but the extremely dry weather meant that results were massively disappointing.  After some lovely scenery along the canal (and a few mallards) the nearby marais de l'Estagnol was pretty much a misnomer as it had pretty much completely dried up and there was little to see beyond a couple of white horses.

Mallow Skipper

The area is a mixture of marshes and prosperous-looking seaside resorts.  Turning onto a cycle track near Portiragnes Plage, I did see something interesting - a mallow skipper, the only skipper I encountered on the whole trip, flying around some plants at the edge of a reed bed.

Grey Heron

The track eventually led up the side of the Lac de la Grande Maire, a massive inland lake which also proved to be totally dried out for a good part of its length. At the wider end there were a few gulls and I thought I might have spotted a couple of purple heron on the far side.  But they turned out to be (rather large) juvenile grey heron.

This was nothing like the experience I had cycling down the Navigation Channel during my holiday based in Arles in 2013. However that was in June rather than September.

In retrospect, I wish I hadn't spent time scouring the supposed marshes and headed straight for the conservation area at Les Orpellieres.  Here there was a good spread of vegetation and signs of butterflies and birds to add to the little egret I spotted in passing through.  It looked a great place to wander around on foot and the bottom end of the Orb river is also attractive.  There were several sizeable fish just beneath the surface and several fishermen trying their luck.

Unfortunately I was by then somewhat behind schedule and needed something to eat before heading back to Beziers to return the cycle I had hired.

Black Redstart

I spent an extra day in Beziers which turned out to be pretty rainy.  During a brief visit to the Parc des Poetes, I noticed a flock of sparrows working the trees that didn't seem quite the same as usual.  Wondering if they were spanish sparrows, I returned in the evening with camera but of course they were no longer around.  However there were some black redstarts messing around on the paths, and unlike the other small birds I encountered, they weren't particularly shy. They were also a good deal lighter in colour than examples I have seen in Germany

Sunday 31st March

The magpies have continued their nest building efforts. Though at times I was thinking any of the three little pigs could have done a better job, it does now look reasonably stable though not fully visible through the bushes.  So far there is no sign of chicks.

Perhaps also looking for a nest site, two or three fat tree bumblebees have worked their way through the garden.  More amusing however have been the antics of some of the pigeons as they seek to feed on the ivy berries out the back.  One even looked like it was having an ivy bath.  A wren has also visited and I got a nice shot of it singing from the 'dreadlocks' bush, so called because I don't know its real name.

Pigeon

Wren

On a bike ride last Wednesday I heard my first chiffchaffs of the year as soon as I was out of High Spen and they are now around in the woods at the back of the garden.  Between Wylam and Matfen skylarks were about and on the River Pont in the village there was a dipper that was spending so much time underwater I started to wonder if it was a small duck.

On Friday there was a Nature Walk at Whittle Dene Reservoirs.  Quite a few birds were seen but mostly at very long distance, notably wigeon, teal, goldeneye, curlew, cormorant, grey heron and greylag goose.  

Towards the end of the afternoon the wind dropped and we did get a few better sightings near the Southern Reservoir.  There were a couple of feral pigeons at the farmhouse, a few pied wagtails and a good view of a meadow pipit on the fence.  I thought I'd seen a warbler but others disagreed. The best thing we did see was a quick flypast by a sand martin, the first hirondine of this summer.  From all that, the only decent photograph I got was this heron.

Monday 29th October

The day after I finished writing about the apparent lack of interest in my fatball feeders, two or three long-tailed tits visited them briefly but haven't returned, though the weather has now certainly turned cold.  Today a grey squirrel was nosing around the garden but it was after peanuts.

Arguably more interesting was the appearance of a female pheasant on the back fence.  It sat there for quite a while, doing nothing.  It struck me that I never mention seeing a pheasant but of course I have been seeing them all the time, specially when I was out cycling in Dumfries.

Pheasant

Last Wednesday I went on a bike ride to Segedunum in Wallsend and encountered an urban fox trotting towards me on the cycle track in Walker.  I'm not sure who was the more surprised.

On Friday I deided to try out some of the local bird hides to see if winter visitors had started to arrive.

I started out at Shibdon Pond and quickly caught a duck I didn't recognise in the binoculars.  A quick google after a check in the hide log confirmed it was a ruddy shelduck, so something of a rarity although it's obviously featured regularly at Shibdon Pond and another couple of birdwatchers I talked to afterwards didn't seem to regard it as at all notable.  It isn't quite clear whether ruddy shelducks that appear in the UK are errant migrants or feral birds.  However, there are some at Washington WWT that eat out of your hand.

Ruddy shelduck (centre) and others

Unfortunately, I had forgotten my camera and had to make do with a poor shot on my phone.
The other main species at Shibdon were moorhen, shoveler and over 20 canada geese that probably had just arrived.

I then moved on to a hide at Lamesley where things were quiet but for some teal and a pair of gadwall.  Teal also featured closer at a hide near the Derwent at Thornley Woods, along with a heron hunting in slow motion and a diving cormorant that then settled to dry off its wings.

Thursday 28th December

A long lapse has been brought on by an outburst of househunting and so no nature activity.  The one thing I did notice was a casual visit to the garden by a wren.  I'm sure this must have happened before at some point but I can't remember the last time I saw one there.

But yesterday I needed to get some fresh air after Christmas and set off to Mersehead following a couple of reports of bramblings in the area, notably on the feeders at the Visitor's Centre which seemed a good idea on a chilly day.

Greenfinches

I duly arrived and found a profusion of birds around the feeders, the first being a yellowhammer that was not to reappear later.  It was nice to see a couple of tree sparrows quite quickly too. The low, bright sunlight made it difficult to see colour and I at first thought there were some bright, small birds that might be of some note. The photos showed some birds obviously had a yellowish tinge and on finally using the binoculars I could see that they were female greenfinches and almost all the others were tree sparrows.

This was in itself interesting as I would never have expected the scene to be dominated by these two species and have never seen either bird in such large numbers.  There were some tits, dunnocks and blackbirds plus a fair few chaffinches but at times every second bird was a tree sparrow or a greenfinch.  It also seemed to me that the female greenfinches were a bit smaller than the males, something I hadn't observed before.

Meanwhile I scanned the chaffinches for anything that looked a bit different, i.e. a brambling but no brambling did appear.

After some time I set off for a wander towards the hides.  Apart from the barnacles, various flocks of which were honking all around the pace, there was a big cluster of birds motionless in one of the bushes on the path to Bruaich Hide.

Linnet

Again the light was difficult but I took them to be linnets.  They sat motionless as I gradually approached as if saving their energy on such a cold day.  In the end they did reluctantly fly off apart from one, presumably their PR Officer who stayed on his/her perch and allowed me to get a close up. 

Apart from that there was precious little to be sighted in the distance on the wetlands and I was having a bit of trouble focussing my binoculars, which got steamed up with the change of temperature on leaving the visitor's centre.

So I decided on a yomp across the beach before returning to the feeders just before dusk.  It was all very enjoyable in the sunshine, very still and quiet but again nothing to be seen (apart from a single heron over the wetland).  The reason in my view was that the tide was extremely far out, and so all the waders, birds of prey etc. move out with it.

Mersehead - very pretty, but no birds in sight!

At the end of the day I spent a good hour watching the feeders until the sun started to disappear.  Still no brambling...