In a period of unsettled weather, yesterday looked to be the best opportunity to look for some invertebrates, so I set out for a slow ride to take in Path Head Nature Reserve, Ryton Meadows and the Spetchells. Unfortunately some photography issues limited the possibility of confirming some sightings.
Path Head is a reclaimed recycling site and looks promising for future months and years. During a brief outburst of sunshine, I quickly spotted a peacock, a red-tailed bumblebee queen and a carder bee. Quite a few dandelions were out and I was looking out for mining bees but the result was a number of mini miners, as usual hard and somewhat controversial to identify. However I captured one in my bug box and am fairly confident it was a common mini-mining bee.
Another capture I made later showed a very small bee with a lot of red on the thorax and reddish legs. The photo however was unhelpful. Following a tip that it might be a small nomad bee, I reckon a long shot might be little nomad bee, which preys on the common mini-miner though more prevalent in the South.
Little Nomad Bee?
Later there was an opportunity to see a heron admiring the flora.
Heron
In fairness there was a drainage trench nearby.
I then headed to Ryton Meadows, in the hope of perhaps seeing an early small copper. It wasn't entirely unexpected when that hope proved forlorn (a bit early yet) but I did find another interesting bee on another dandelion. It looked like a small nomad bee but notably had a yellow face. I can't see any potential matches. Maybe it was a wasp.
It was at this point that the technical problems really began to take over as a series of images I'm certain I took between arriving at Ryton and climbing up the Spetchells have simply disappeared from my little travelling camera. As I actually had it round my neck while riding I can only assume that the delete button got pressed a few times accidentally, which seems most unlikely..
So as well as unable to get any further with the possible nomad I lost photos of a peacock and several of orange tips including females and some of suspected chocolate mining bees that I wanted to double check.
Approaching the Spetchells with the camera now back in my rucksack, I noticed a number of small nomad bees patrolling a wee area of grassland next the cycle track. They looked rather like Gooden's Mining Bee but a good deal smaller than the ones up on the chalk. Again having referred to experts for an identification, the suggestion is that it might be a male Gooden's though I must admit I'm surprised it was that much smaller. This time I got a reasonable pic.
Gooden's Nomad Bee (m)
There was about 10-20 of them flying around low and seldom settling for more than a few sedonds.
Before going up to the Spetchells I noticed another bee on a dandelion right next to where I parked my bike. I was fairly confident it was an orange-tailed mining bee but in this case the photo was too poor to say.
The reason for heading to the Spetchells was to see if the buffish mining bees are in action yet. Indeed they are - in their many thousands. It looked to me that they were all males but activity was particularly intense in one small area, I suspect because of the presence of an early female (at the top of the frame in the video):
One Buffish Mining Bee
Many Buffish Mining Bees
As a bonus, I also managed to find the first - excepting my trip to Spain - small tortoiseshell and the first speckled wood (what on earth's happening with them?) I've seen this year, as well as a not so great photo of the last female orange tip of the day.
The pattern over the rest of the festive period has been for restricted sightings but with the occasional bonus prize.
I did a quickish walk around the QEII with a friend when there was very little to see in the way of ducks or waders but a single herring gull turned up among the swans at the hotel end.
Herring Gull
For a while I did wonder whether it might be a different gull but the expert opinion was 'third winter herring gull.' So there!
I spent New Year with V&A in Crawford, driving there in pelting rain. We didn't get out the next day but Alex got a great shot of the Northern Lights!
Aurora Borealis
I hasn't to add I didn't get a thing and it wasn't even visible to the naked eye. But pretty good considering we weren't further North.
On the 2nd we managed a trip to Airds Moss, which looked very promising but seeing anything following the sudden temperature drop and in an almost total lack of wind was hard going.
A heron flew along the valley at one point and, thanks to Alex's supreme spotting skills, we picked out a flock of goldfinches feeding in some distant trees, although getting a decent shot of them was a different story as they hid behind the withering catkins.
He then managed to spot a good number of distant fieldfares feeding near a large collection of molehills. Again, getting at a decent view was difficult, this time as they were at considerable distance.
Goldfinch
Fieldfare
Just to prove there were more than one each:
Goldfinches
Fieldfares
This was however the first time I have seen any fieldfares for a very long time, so worthy of note. As far as I could detect, no redwing were present.
A couple of days ago I made a visit to Whittle Dene to check for a little owl but it looks to me that some of the cracks in the wall where it supposedly nests have been filled in.
The fishing lakes were pretty clear apart from a couple of mallard, gulls and a couple of tufted ducks a very long way off.
A little investigation up the back of the nature reserve proved fruitless.
Yesterday the snow came down heavily and there was a frenzy of birds at the feeders. At last the long-tailed tits participated fully and there were five of them at one point attacking a nearly empty suet ball feeder.
It wasn't the best photo, but the little things don't stay still for long!
The weather remains largely wet, notwithstanding the odd brighter day, and temperatures a variable.
Anyway I can report a first ever garden sighting following the confirmed appearance of a siskin.
The siskin is of course not an uncommon bird. Up to now I have wondered whether it was due to elevation.
Actually it's more likely explained by the lack in this immediate vicinity of pine trees, which do of course occur at considerable height, is the causal factor.
I've also mentioned occasional appearances by male and female chaffinches lately, and a couple of days ago both turned up to feed off the ground.
It looks like chaffinches may now be a thing as one or other has reappeared recently.
Chaffinches
A recent visit to Boldon Flats also produced some quite nice sightings, notably a lot of wigeon
Shelduck
Teal and Wigeon
Heron and Wigeon
Unfortunately it didn't produce any birds of prey or migrant rarities. Just a little egret that, after showing well for a while, made itself more and more scarce. I spent quite a lot of time grappling with camera technicalities.
There have been some further signs of spring. Last week a probable honey bee hovered around the open garage door. At the tennis club, a toad was found crawling across court 4 to the river and I tried to rescue an early bumblebee queen, unfortunately on the point of dying.
Sometimes I'm too much the pessimist. Although we did not get the summer-like temperatures experienced in the South of England, we did get a warmer than usual murk with occasional bursts of sunshine into the high teens. The upshot was that I called time too early on the buddleia, the largest bush suddenly producing a decent sprig of flower in its very centre over the last few days. This managed to briefly attract a fine red admiral on the 8th October, thereby achieving a personal mini-ambition and establishing a record that may not last long in the face of climate change.
Red Admiral
Meanwhile i have a new toy, a Nikon Coolpix camera, bought especially with the idea in mind of boosting my birdwatching efforts. The wee Panasonic Lumix I have been using is brilliant in many respects but the zoom can be slow and the focus imprecise.
Perhaps understandably the additional camera has brought some technical issues. There was a good opportunity to try it out yesterday on a Naturewatch visit to Hauxley Nature Reserve. As on recent visits to Hauxley nothing spectacular was sighted, which didn't trouble me as I was mainly using it to practice my camera skills.
It was therefore disturbing to note that I had difficulty in seeing much through the viewfinder and when focussing on distant birds. I started to wonder if I was going to get any usable shots at all. Anyway I persevered and managed to solve the focussing issue after a bit.
Here is a gallery of the results:
Coal Tit
Bullfinches with Goldfinch
Chaffinch
Shoveler
Goldeneye
Grey Heron
Mallard
Mallow
Obviously the coal tit was taken in the garden and added as my first ever attempt.
It wasn't until I got home before I solved how to resolve the dim viewfinder. Easy enough when you know how but with 308 pages of user manual as well as a very intricate looking piece of photo processing software, it could be a long learning curve!
As expected the buddleia hasn't lasted into October well enough to have much chance of attracting further butterflies, as just two or three reasonable sprigs remain. The last red admiral to visit was sighted on 24th September. Perhaps surprisingly though, the penultimate visitor on the 21st was a one-off comma.
Comma
Holly blue sightings did manage to rise by one, making a presumed final total of 14.
On Friday I finally got round to manage a planned visit to Hammerlands at Moffat (now apparently The Green Frog) to see if I could catch a trout on my father's old fly fishing gear. Unfortunately most of the lake was heavily weeded and I didn't catch anything - and neither did the other two visitors on the day. I did however manage to see some hefty looking trout but most were moving around at considerable speed and seemed disinterested in any offerings.
Staying over with my son in Crawford, we then got out for a birdwatching trip to Lochwinnoch RSPB that proved my theory that you will often see nothing interesting until you are on the point of giving up.
Although it was a pleasant walk, there wasn't that much birdlife around, the main items noted being shoveler, heron and long-tailed tit plus some distant views of goldeneye.
Goldeneye
One interesting section was the boardwalk to the Peel Tower, where there was an abundance of himalayan balsam. We noted several bees and wasps nectaring on it, all of which seemed to have white markings on the thorax. I wondered if the first one we saw was a rare bee or if some kind of disease was prevalent. We eventually concluded that it was in fact pollen from the balsam as it affected all of them, including honey bee, carder bee and buff-tailed bumblebee. Attempts to photograph it were in vain as the marking simply doesn't show up well. This was my best attempt:
Buff-tailed Bumblebee
On a nearby lake, we did manage to add great-crested grebe and tufted duck to the list for the day.
Tufted Duck
Great Crested Grebe
Giving up on further sightings, we headed for Lanark where we bought fish and chips, which we decided to eat at Lanark Loch, mainly because it is a known carp venue.
Leaving binoculars and cameras in the car, we found a bench near the water and opened up the chips. It was no surprise when a couple of swans came over but they were then followed by up to 20 gulls we couldn't immediately identify. It turned out they were bonaparte's gulls, an occasional migrant from North America. Fortunately, Vicki managed to record this first ever sighting for me on her mobile phone.
It has been an ambition of mine for some while to coax the buddleia bushes into retaining enough blossoms past the end of September to attract a few last butterflies. This year has to go down as a near miss.
A red admiral managed an appearance on the 29th September and there was a large white on the 30th but by today there are so few flowers left that it looks like there is no realistic chance of further visitors.
The last Red Admiral
Frustratingly I can't know if anything turned up in the good weather yesterday as Malcolm and I decided to go to Holy Island, where there had been a couple of sightings of a rustic bunting..
There it was still pretty much summer weather all day but we didn't see anything of great note - let alone the rustic bunting - and neither did anyone else we spoke to. In fact we didn't see many birds at all in our wanderings.
There were a few sanderling and turnstone plodging in the mud near the pier, the latter seeming to be between their summer and winter suits.
Turnstones
Further along the bay there was a pair of eiders and a heron, but nothing in the Vicar's garden apart from one cockerel lying on a flower bed.
Male Eider Duck
We paused at a pub for liquid refreshment and shared a picnic bench with a number of crumb-stealing sparrows, the one species we did see a lot of, more in fact than I see anywhere nearer home. It was nice to see them close up.
Sparrows
Walking further around the island produced even more sparse results - mainly a stonechat posing nicely and this oversized owl.
Stonechat
Owl
We stopped at the bird hide where there were a large number of ducks on the shallow lake. However identification was difficult against the light and because they all had their heads tucked firmly down. In fact some of them looked like they were completely stuck in the mud. Definitely present were mallard, mute swan, coot, little grebe and probably teal.
It was pleasing not to see any dead birds but we did see this partly exposed human skeleton on the archaeological dig at the sight of a possible mediaeval monastery.
Skull
Presumably it belonged to a mediaeval monk rather than a twitcher who waited around too long for the rustic bunting.
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.
The period over the last fortnight has been pretty flat. A couple of low flying kites near the house served to emphasize that poorer weather is on the way. In the garden the only item of note was the appearance of a male woodpecker, rather than the female and juvenile that were visiting in summer.
A promising walk around Featherstone and Lambley Viaduct only produced a heron and a chaffinch or two plus some large funghi and the most impressive sight was probably the viaduct itself.
Similarly little happened on two exercise bike rides to Belsay and on the Tyne Derwent Circular. Well they do say October can be a quiet time for birds that can readily find lots of berries to eat.
Not so however on the Northumberland coast where various rarities have turned up as documented at @NTBirdClub particularly on Holy Island and I finally managed a trip up there on Thursday despite an unpromising weather forecast.
Lapwing
After a much-needed visit to the facilities, I spotted a promising path heading North just after eleven. Rain duly arrived so I turned back as planned and had lunch in one of the village hostelries.
Nosing around the village I happened on a couple of twitchers who told me where to find the brown shrike - further along the path I had been on before, so I duly retraced my steps into the marshland areas.
Here there were a few lapwing, the odd curlew and a single kestrel resting on a fencepost, but I also found another lone twitcher, who told me the shrike and just flown off somewhere. So I continued on the path until just before the dunes, checking every likely spot.
On turning back some frantic waving from the twitcher showed that it had reappeared and about half a dozen of us got a view of it on the other end of a wall from an unconcerned stonechat.
A considerable distance was involved and I certainly couldn't have identified it without assistance, though it did have a fairly characteristic 'jizz'.
Stonechat
Brown Shrike
It's over a hundred miles to Holy Island and back, but considering the shrike had come from Siberia, well worth the trip for only the third occasion I have seen any sort of shrike, let alone a rare one.
There were no further sensations after this but it was nice to see some early redwings and fieldfares on the way back.
Fieldfare
I checked out some noted hotspots around the village without success. A particular one is the Vicar's Garden, so much so that there is a birders' box for contributions to church funds on the outside wall.
I didn't see anything worth noting there either so did not contribute, though I did get a nice view of the Vicar's Cockerel.
Vicar's Cockerel
None of the other birders I spoke to had more to report either. On consideration it may be that some migrant birds were pushed onto the coast by several days of east wind, which have now ceased and so they have mostly departed. Shrikes however, having established a territory will tend to stay for a while.
