Sunday, January 20, 2008

Its a record!



Top - It doesn't get any calmer than that.
Bottom - Lindisfarne Castle.

Not a bad day again today, generally fair and dry with odd very light showers, flat calm.

This morning I spent four hours at Boulmer seeing very little indeed. I trecked out to a field behind the old airfield in the hopes of a Lap Bunt or something because it looked very weedy through the scope and I had seen a small flock of larks there recently, but it was a failure.

Then I did a second winter atlas visit to the Longhoughton Steel tetrad. All in all a lot of the patch had a decent flogging with no return and not a single new addition to the list.

Best of the visit were 1 Buzzard over mewing, 1 Sparrowhawk doing that slow flapping like a harrier trying to flush birds from the turnip field ( even it couldn't find anything), 29 Greylags flew south, the Long tailed Duck remained at Howdiemont with seven Goldeneye and a Red throated Diver was offshore.

This afternoon we all headed to the north of the county for a change. A walk along Cocklaw Burn Dunes south of Berwick was pleasant, then on to Holy Island at dusk to see the massive Starling roost at the lough. We had 5. Not 5,000, just 5.

On the way across the causeway with the sea lapping around my mudflaps I nearly ran over a cracking Slavonian Grebe as it swam over in front of the car. It dived and surfaced only a few yards away giving great views on the mirror calm water.

A Merlin was on one of the roadside marker posts as we drove past and there were plenty of Pale bellied Brent Geese scattered around including a nice group of 100 or so near the Crooked Lonnen. After we dipped on thousands of Starkies we headed back to the car. On the way a big dog Fox showed well near the track. Bunty didn't even see it...

And the 'record' bit? Well In the seven days since last Sunday over 1,025 visits have been made to my blog. An absolute massive record!!! Thanks to all...

8 comments:

East Ayton Birding said...

The viewing figures at the end of the day are going to reflect regular quality updates - congratulations.

The Wessex Reiver said...

I agree, one of the very best willdife blogs about, and I work with a lot of people who do this for a living.

BB - RNG at Caistron if you didn't know.

Unknown said...

Well done, it's a great wildlife blog and is very entertaining to read. Also, it's probably the only media in the NE this week that hasn't mentioned King Kev!

Stewart said...

Dave - Cheers
BR - Ditto. Yes I saw that there was a RNG on my pager. A good record so far inland.
Mark - Who?;-)

Unknown said...

The nickname is felton mark - that should do!

Stewart said...

Oh I see... the 'who' though was for 'King Kev'?

ST said...

ifkorzi first thought your first pic, was a painting.

Had a problem with my computer , it kept jumping to your blog every few seconds last week ;-)
I agree with E.A.B.

ST said...

ignore the first word it was te W.Verif........