Sunday 24th February

My good streak of birdwatching luck has continued.

Short-eared owl

On Friday I travelled to Prestwick Carr reserve in search of short-eared owls, arriving about an hour or so before dusk in unseasonably mild weather.

Setting out to the birdwatching platform, I was hardly a third of the way there when my target for the evening, a short-eared owl appeared, quartering the moorland to my left and broadly heading in the direction I had come from.

I nevertheless continued towards the platform, which was technically the right thing to do as that is the area where they mainly get seen.  On this occasion however, there was no further sign and I had to count myself fortunate to get some sort of a shot of it in flight as it was only in view for two or three minutes.

Willow tits

Visiting the platform had an extra dividend in that there was a male reed bunting and a series of tits, including a couple of willow tits, visiting the feeders put out next to the path.

I met a regular visitor to the Carr who also picked up a few deer and a fox in his binoculars at distance.  I couldn't see them in mine, adding to my suspicion that I might need an even better pair.

In the garden the other morning there was a bit of a fight between two male blackbirds and straight after a set-to between two robins on the bird table.  Clearly, spring is with us early.

Saturday 16th February

Hot on the heels of the water rail success on Monday, I decided to try my luck with the snow buntings at St Mary's Island again. As driving there by any route is a nuisance and the weather was improving, I decided to cycle there from the Quayside, overruling my better judgment that hi-vis jacket and samll binoculars might not be advisable.  I also found no room in my bag for a bird guide.

In fact it couldn't have worked out much better.  En route along cycle track 72, I saw about eight magpies in the same tree close to the Tyne Tunnel, and roughly the same number again round about - more than ever before in the same view.

I rode right through to St Mary's without stopping and immediately heard an invisible skylark over the adjacent fields.  Following the call of nature on the edge of the nature reserve, I got a good view of a curlew in the same field, as well as canada geese, mallard and teal in the reserve itself.  Then I cycled very slowly towards the lighthouse with camera and binoculars at the ready.

When looking for an uncommon bird, the best plan seems to be to not look for the bird but to watch out for a twitcher with a huge camera lens.  It worked again today as soon as I reached the second car park.  There was the twitcher and the three snow buntings were running around on the grassy slope eating seeds - one male and two females.

Snow Buntings

Snow buntings have the reputation of not being shy of humans and this little group was relatively unphased by most repeated disturbances, including amusingly that from the middle-aged bikers in the car park less than ten yards away, revving their throttles.

Occasionally the birds retired to the foreshore or the railings on the promenade but always came back while I sat for around half an hour having my lunch.

It was a flat, high tide and there wasn't much else about apart from a few cormorants.  I took a couple more looks into the reserve but only saw a group of redshanks on the pool if you discount these Dartmoor ponies that are employed to keep the vegetation down.

Dartmoor Ponies at work

There were stories of a black redstart at Tynemouth as well as a ring-necked parakeet in Newcastle but hey, I'd seen both of those in my travels to Europe.  So I decided to head back in a vain attempt to beat the rush hour.

Wednesday 13th February

Blue Tit house hunting

A bit of a landmark moment occurred last weekend when the first blue tit (that I have seen anyway) undertook a fairly detailed viewing of the nesting box on the side of the summer house. So far there hasn't been a second viewing but it's a step in the right direction. Robins are starting to become tuneful as another sign of the approach of Spring. A red kite flew straight over the garden yesterday as well just after I had got of the bus around 4.20 pm. I've also seen goldfinches when walking to the bus stop.

Last Wednesday I was out on a bike ride and saw three or four bullfinches along the cycle track just west of Rowland's Gill and as good a view as I've had of a jay, plus a couple of grey squirrels and a buzzard and a kestrel later on.  The kestrel was actually hovering low over the left-hand side of the road as I was approaching Whittonstall.  For a moment, I thought it was going to let me ride straight underneath it.

This was all largely eclipsed by an excellent trip to the Big Waters reserve with the Nature Watchers group

Iceland Gull

this Monday.  There were a number of bullfinches on the way to the first hide, where a number of ducks and geese were quickly identified, including wigeon, teal, tufted duck, canada and greylag geese.

Gulls aren't really my thing but it was interesting to see a herring gull on a well-frequented island straight in front of us.  One of our more expert members also pointed out an iceland gull that clearly dominated the others. Later a number of lapwing landed there too, giving an excellent display of iridescent plumage in the bright sunlight.

The second hide was even more productive.  A number of reed buntings were passing through the reeds and eating the heads, as were incidentally a couple of blue tits.  A wren also passed through, low down into the reeds.

There was also an area of cut grass with a large number of bird tables and feeders to the rear of the hide, which attracted a very wide variety of visitors after a time, including bullfinch, great tit, blue tit, reed bunting, tree sparrow and yellowhammer.  This was not however where I would have expected to see a water rail, which strutted over the lawn on a couple of occasions and appeared to be relatively tame.

Reed Bunting

Water Rail

Yellowhammer

Both the water rail and the iceland gull were first sightings for me.               

Monday 4th February

Well sometimes you just get lucky...

Things were looking up a bit in the days after my paltry Great British Bird Watch, as a volley of long-tailed tits started turning up on the garden feeders with some regularity for a few days afterwards and the odd red kite continued to sail by at low altitude.

Then yesterday I had a meeting with a few friends in Hexham.  Having read on the @NTBirdClub twitter feed that a smew and a red-breasted merganzer had recently turned up on the river at Tyne Green, I chucked a pair of binoculars and a camera in the bag on the off-chance there would be time to take a look between trains.

Indeed there was, and when a couple of us got down to the river, who we should bump into but @birderlewis, a fifteen year old lad who had posted the info on twitter and told us that he'd seen both and the smew was still around close to the opposite bank.

I got a snap of a suspect that eventually  turned out to be a female goldeneye.  We foraged around a bit and saw a couple of treecreepers at work, before deciding to see if we could get a better shot of the "smew".

Moving back downriver in fading light, I caught sight of a couple of ducks playing around near the edge of the far bank under neath a falling tree.  A quick check in the binoculars showed they had brown heads and so I took a shot and concluded "job done" we'd found a couple of smew - subject to photographic confirmation as the distance was too great and the light too poor to be certain.

Inspired by this success, I decided to cycle the 20 miles back to Hexham today (against considerable headwind I might add) to see if I could bag the merganzer.  I thought I'd found them but in fact they turned out to be goosanders - as did the photos I took last night.

Still thinking that I was getting merganzers, I took another snap of these four today, only to find on returning to the computer that the one trailing behind is a smew!

Goosanders and Smew

Still I'd never seen a smew before.  As I said earlier - sometimes you just get lucky.

Wednesday 28th January

Some rather mixed recent weather and a need to address my increasing post-Christmas weight have limited my recent excursions.

I rode to Newcastle by bike on Saturday for non-nature reasons but encountered a group of twitchers on the Tyne at Blaydon, one of whom amusingly said they were trying to change a chaffinch into a brambling.  I understood - bramblings are like that.

On the way back I cycled up the hill from Rowland's Gill and saw a series of five low-flying red kites between the town centre and Highfield.  In between there was a brief sighting of a seagull pursuing a much smaller finch-sized bird. Not something that normally occurs but I supposed it was a dispute over a garden titbit.

On Sunday morning I attempted to take part in the Great British Garden Birdwatch.  Gale force winds meant that I spent most of my time twiddling my thumbs and produced a not particularly typical final count of six jackdaw, two magpies, one wood pigeon and one blue tit apart from four unidentifiable seagulls flying high above.

Typically of course a posse of long-tailed titis turned up towards dusk and this morning blue tit, great tit and coal tit all visited the bird table that yesterday had largely been ignored.

Today the red kites were back in evidence again at Rowland's Gill.  I had a few minutes to spare at the viaduct when one hovered low overhead offering good views. The resulting mobile phone footage gives an impression of greater distance but it was pleasing when another bird joined in.

A male and a female perhaps?

There was another guy on the viaduct who told me that there were only 36 red kites in the area, but I think that would have been the original release number.  Presumably they will have bred.

Wednesday 16th January

Wallington Hall

Deciding I couldn't fancy another trip to windy Whitley Bay after snow buntings, I decided to take a run up to Wallington Hall in Northumberland.  A hawfinch was reported there in December but I wasn't surprised not to see any.  Nor did I see the lesser kestrel or spotted crake that apparently have visited lately, nor a red squirrel.. Nevertheless I really liked the place, clearly designed for enjoyment and with a rich variety of interesting features within easy walking distance.

I took a relaxing stroll to the main bird hide, where the birds have been encouraged to come very close and are as a result quite tame.  It was pretty much the normal assortment of species that turn up on feeders, pleasingly including quite a few greenfinches and at one point, a jay flew in and settled briefly on the ground.  One woman thought she had seen a brambling abd I spent a fair amount of time watching the chaffinch flocks without being able to confirm.

The best moment though was when a treecreeper turned up and instead of creeping up the trees, affixed itself to one of the feeders for several minutes. It then surprised me even more by landing on the ground underneath the seed feeder and foraging for fallen crumbs.

Treecreeper on nuts

Treecreeper on ground

I think this must be learned behaviour.  I've never seen a treecreeper behave like this before.

I ended with a quick tour of the lakes in the East Wood, which revealed a couple of shovellers, mallard and a little grebe.

A pleasant day.

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.