Saturday 21st April

A burst of nature activity recently, brought on by good weather and a scaling down of domestic activity.

On Thursday I went on a Meet Up walk along the river near Hexham. This was the hottest and sunniest day of the week and I at last saw a few butterflies - a red admiral, a peacock, an unidentified white and a couple of small tortoiseshells mating while I fumbled with the camera.  Near the road bridge to the west, there was a healthy colony of sand martins on the opposite bank.  Chiffchaffs are of course everywhere now and there was a single swallow and a couple of goosander, which also seem to be all over the place this year.

Chiffchaff from below

Roe deer

The new garden has continued to be interesting. A jay briefly alighted on the back fence as I went into the kitchen and a female woodpecker fed on the fatballs this morning.  Technically chiffchaffs have not been in the garden but they have been in the trees that overhang it, picking up insects, as above. This is the first time
I've managed to get any sort of picture of one.

Yesterday my daughter visited and we did a longish walk in Chopwell Woods to satisfy the demands of her pedometer.  It didn't result in anything spectacular apart from a few roe deer and grey squirrels.  The deer were obviously quite tame and there were a couple that were happy enough to have their photos taken even though they had clearly seen us.

Back in the garden today, a red kite circled low over the decking, the colour showing well, but another camera fumble meant the chance of a snap was gone.  This happens to me repeatedly but hopefully the abundance of opportunities in the garden will help me get slicker..

Monday 16th April

I have now been installed in my new home for three weeks and have been keeping a keen eye out to see what turned up in the garden, which is a good deal more rural than the one I had in Dumfries.

I put some fatballs out in a feeder at an early stage and attracted all three common tits, a couple of robins and a blackbird that managed to get its head through the outer cage.

Once unpacked, I started putting food out on the bird table, which attracted more or less the same plus a regular dunnock, a wood pigeon and a magpie.

Log-tailed tits

On going for a walk around the area, I saw a couple of red kites circling and on a bike ride to Newcastle, I saw a grey squirel run across the road and heard a skylark above the hills and a chiffchaff next to the Tyne near Newburn.

More recently I acquired a caged peanut feeder and, gratifyingly,  the first observed visitors were a pair of long-tailed tits that were not part of a larger flock.  Then a jackdaw turned up.

It seemed to me that the bird table was emptying rather quickly and after a couple of days, the peanut feeder was lying on the path spilling its contents, so it was getting clear that there was an intruder of some kind.  Something was also splitting open the striped sunflower seeds on the bird table and leaving the husks around.

I suspected Squireel Nutkin and was not surprised when one turned up digging in one of my pots before surrying off at speed.  The day after it turned up again, shimmied up the stem of the bird feeder and scoffed most of the food. Mystery solved!

That's where all the bird food went!

The day after I saw a red kite quite clearly from my kitchen window.  I think they like to circle over Garesfield Golf Club, which is nearby.

So far I have seen one or two bumble bees and a moth but no butterflies, though one or two small tortoiseshells have been reported on nature websites.

Sunday 25th March

Following various legal delays, I ended up staying with friends and relatives before moving in to new house.

Malcolm and did a nice inland walk along the line of the restored Alnwick railway line, where we saw a couple of youngish goosanders scooting along the Aln after a good view of a wigeon at Amble the previous day. An eider duck also sailed in on the tide at some speed.

Wigeon

Waxwing

Joining my sister Hilary at the weekend, we did a bit of twitching in the hope of catching up with some waxwings that had been showing up in the middle of Forest Hall.  They were still there alright - two of them, also juveniles apparently.  It was hard to get a decent shot and this was the best I could manage.  The colouration seemed distinctly pale and I wondered if this is typical of young birds rather than the result of low sunshine.

These birds stayed in the same location for a fortnight or so and by the end of it, local residents were complaining about them.  They certainly weren't too shy about standing in the middle of the road to get a better view.

Our attempt to see a scaup on Killingworth Lake later in the day did not work out and mostly there were just more wigeon and a more adult (I thought) goosander plus swans / canada geese and other bits and pieces.

Goosander

Saturday 10th March

After a protracted move to Geordieland, I am now playing serious catch-up as in two months' behind.

Part of the moving preparations included the delivery of a unit of furniture to my daughter and her partner, which we engineered to include a visit to Leighton Moss in Morecambe Bay as our meeting point.

Wigeon, lapwing and cormorant

We had hoped for possible exotics in the way of bearded tit, bittern (already booming apparently) and marsh harrier but in the event the last was the only one to be seen briefly.

Instead there was a ready assortment of various other species.  The signs on the way to the lakes were already good when a robin was persuaded to take a bit of banana direct from my hand (first time that's happened) and a marsh tit showed on the feeders (my first in this country).

Then we saw, roughly in order and with fair regularity: little egret, shoveler, cormorant, wigeon, teal, lapwing, tufted duck, pintail, snipe and grey heron.

I was particularly pleased to get the following snaps, the best I have add of each species but it really wasn't too hard:  The patterned underbody of the teal was something I was unaware of.

Teal

Pintail

Little Egret

Wednesday 21st February

A couple of minor outings this week.

A sudden rise in temperature to maximum 12C encouraged me to take a walk along the Nith south of Kingholm Quay on Monday, where I saw the sedge warblers and the redstart last summer.

Conditions were pretty boggy and the main things that made themselves noticeable were an immense number of oystercatchers, mainly in the fields on either bank.  There must have been several hundred of them, far more than I have seen together at any one time before.

Further down there was another submerged field where there were a few whooper swans taking the air.  On looking more closely at some corbids in front of them, I also noticed that there were a couple of shelduck too.  I did not know they could be found on agricultural land but the RSPB handbook does say "visits farmland near the coast."

Whooper swans with preening shelduck

There were a few mallard, a couple of pipits and some barnacle geese in the distance near Glencaple before I got fed up with the flood debris on the path and turned back with a single whooper swimming up and down the tide flow.

Shelduck

The main group of whoopers took off from the field as did the shelduck pair, the latter turning up again further upstream.

Two days later temperatures were falling but the sun was still bright, so I chanced the bike ride to Loch Arthur over Troston.  There were a couple of song thrushes and a few redwing mixed in with a flock of starlings.  Also a couple more whoopers and a small group of goldeneye (again!) on Loch Arthur itself.  Three woodpeckers could be heard drumming but not seen.

I went back via Kirkgunzeon in the hope of yellowhammers but didn't see any and narrowly missed a flight of geese coming in from the west.

Later, there were also a couple of bullfinch pairs, one male showing well next to road up from the Lochfoot roundabout.

But the main thing about this trip was the tremendous effect the bright, low sun had on my new tinted lenses on the way out.  The sky in the West looked turqoise instead of light blue and Loch Arthur looked blue rather than grey.  The colouration of the trees was also much richer.

There were however some negative results as it was often harder to identify the birds - as well as the existence of potholes in shaded areas!  It even had me wondering if I should leave the glasses off in similar conditions.

Saturday 17th February

A wren appeared in the garden one morning as I was getting up.  Perhaps it is coming regularly.

The weather put paid to even a short bike ride on Wednesday, so the day after I took a trip to Threave Castle as I've seen hen harriers there at this time of year.

On the path to the castle there were two great tits obviously hanging around for any titbits of food, just like the robin on one of my previous visits.  I had really meant to keep my eyes open for willow tits on the way to Stepping Stones Hide but sort of forgot.  I visited the hide briefly as a large flock of geese gradually circled in to land on the other side of the river, just mear enough to see through binoculars that they were pink-footed geese.  I've seen a lot of them this year.

Leaving the hide I noticed a single goldeneye being propelled downriver by a flood tide but still managing to dive for food.

There wasn't much going on as I made my way up the river, having stopped for a brief look at the new and old osprey nest sites.  But there was a small flock of long-tailed tits passing through the trees on the way up to the other hides.  I would like to get a snap of one some day but, as usual, they moved on fairly smartly.

The slim pickings continued during three-quarters of an hour spent in the lower hide.  As I half suspected, the nearest part of the marshy grassland was extensively flooded, which I think decreased the likelihood of harriers passing by.

A buzzard or two flew past and a red kite wheeled around for a bit a good way off.  In the far distance it was just about possible to distinguish some wigeon on the deeper water, but otherwise all was quiet.

All quiet from the hide - apart from a single swan

A nice little foray nonethless.  On the way back to the car, there were a couple of roe deer hanging around the edge of a field for quite some time.

Sunday 11th February

Some nasty weather and other concerns meant that I didn't venture out on the bike for a couple of weeks, so I decided on a bit of self-discipline and set off for a round trip to Bankend and Torthorwald last Sunday.

Just past weekend I saw the pink-footed geese in exactly the same field where I saw them last month and another skein on the other side of the road proved to be barnacles.  The rest of the ride didn't produce much but there were quite a few snowdrops around, though these I took a couple of weeks ago at Ken Dee Marshes.

Snowdrops

Part of the reasoning for the trip was to get ready for a longer ride on to Dalbeattie on Wednesday. I started up The Glen and immediately saw a huge powder puff heading into the undergrowth next to the road, evidence of a disappearing roe dear.  Then there was a male bullfinch flying into the hedgerow, after which I saw a female in the hedgerow on the other side of the cycle track.  I hope I wasn't disturbing anything.

Crossing the road after Kirkgunzeon there was a sole magpie, still not a common sighting west of Dumfries.

The weather was bitter and my hands were freezing under two pairs of gloves so the ride took on more the aspect of a survival challenge.  A frequent sight was loan buzzards perched on telegraph poles, perhaps hoping for enough wind to get airborne without undue effort. Most looked like immature birds.

Then today, after flogging round Mersehead before Christmas and several times keeping my eye out for them, I finally saw a single brambling on the way back from the shops with the Sunday paper.  It was a definite sighting, confirmed by another nature lover who passed by.

Of course I didn't have my camera in my pocket.  I returned with it a few minutes later but the brambling made off and I was left with just a couple of poor distance shots of a bullfinch and a goldfinch near to where it had been.

Bullfinch

Goldfinch