Saturday 10th April

 I noted some while back that spottings in my garden are a bit upside down in that birds that are normally common appear seldom - and vice versa.  A recent surprise was to spot two 'rarities' at the same time last week, a male garden sparrow and a siskin.  A female sparrow also turned up a couple of days later, as did briefly a goldfinch.  Both birds can be seen close at hand but don't usually visit the garden.  You'd really expect more siskins, given the amount of nearby woodland.

Siskin

To cap that I also got the best view I have ever had of a jay, which hung around for a couple of minutes just behind the bottom fence.  This happened while I was getting dressed upstairs, hence alas no photo.

The weather has done a major u-turn putting an end to butterfly sightings but Spring has now sprung and other species are abundant.  

A week ago on Friday Frances and I did a very scenic walk along the Blyth at Humford Mill near Bedlington.  There was wild garlic and other woodland flowers starting to come out all over the place, plus one plant I knew I recognised but needed to check - alternate leaf golden saxifrage.  There was less in the way of birdlife apart from a grey wagtail and a quick flash of a dipper flying downstream.

Grey Wagtail

Alternate Leaf Golden Saxifrage

Although the weather was already starting to cool there were a good few bumblebee queens on the move, one of which seemed to me on the basis of video evidence seemed to be a buff-tailed bumblebee.

One week later it was quite chilly when Malcolm and I set out from Low Newton to the outskirts of Beadnell against a northerly wind.

There were skylarks all over the place with a good number of meadow pipits, one of which posed nicely on a stretch of cut grass near a holiday park.

Meadow Pipit

It was one of those days when the further we walked, the more we saw.  By the time we got back we had also seen kestrels, stonechats, a flock of geese in flight that eventually landed at distance and looked to contain a mixture of greylag and pink-footed geese. there were a good few shelduck around, a couple of which were just about near enough to catch in the camera, though I never even spotted the curlew that was next to them.  A shallow pond produced a couple of gadwall and lapwing as well. however I was most pleased with a quick but unmistakeable view of a golden plover through the binoculars.

Shelduck - and curlew

Afterwards we stopped for a coffee back at Low Newton.  The tide was in and there was a proliferation of sanderling, redshank and oystercatchers on the crowded shoreline and a fleet of eider duck further out.

I reckoned there were some other small birds running around with the sanderling and took a few casual shots thinking to identify them later.  In fact I totally missed the foreshore and got instead a couple of blurred shots of birds in flight above the waves.  One had an upwardly curved beak but wasn't an avocet so I suppose possibly a godwit.  The other was a small wader but from what little I had looked more like illustrations of Temminck's Stint than the dunlin or knot I anticipated.  That however seems rather more unlikely.

If we had visited the foreshore at the beginning rather than the end of the day, I might have paid it more attention.

Monday 4th May

One of the features of my activities is sudden and often fleeting surprises. Sometimes it's not so much the sighting as the location of the sighting that defines the surprise.

So it was no surprise to catch sight of a jay on a recent bike ride through the North end of Chopwell Woods last week but I was considerably surprised when one landed on the patio corner unit earlier this week.  In fact it was the closest view of a jay I've ever managed.

I also wouldn't be surprised to spot a marsh tit in certain locations but it certainly did surprise me when one turned up in the hedgerow of the Hadrian's Cycleway right where it passes by Leamington Centre last Friday. A good amount of mature woodland in Denton Burn nearby offered some explanation.

What they had in common was that neither hung around to pose for a photo.

Overall the good weather started to break about a week ago and butterfly sightings have become scarce, just the odd peacock, speckled wood and orange tip plus a couple of green-veined whites. Last Saturday I made the first positive sighting of a female orange tip on the garlic mustard in my garden.  On the whole the whites are still performing flypasts without coming in to land, unlike most aircraft which are doing the opposite.

This Wednesday the rains finally moved in bringing a drop in temperature and I decided to indulge in a bit of flower spotting on my last visit to the Woods before it hit. It had caught my eye that most of the things I was seeing were white.  I'm not strong on wild flowers but managed to identify the following as wood sorrel, wood ruff and (I hope I've got this right) greater stitchwort.

Riding back home from Swalwell along the old railway on Friday, I suddenly picked up a whiff of garlic and so was able to add that to the gallery as well.

Wood Sorrel	Wood Ruff
Greater Stitchwort	Wild Garlic