As Billy Idol would say...

'Its a, nice day for a ....white wagtail...'

Before writing this I've just scanned through the blogs in my links to see what my peers have been up to this weekend and find a single disturbing recurring theme. Most have seen spring migrants on their patches. Now I'm depressed. The only thing to cheer me up was ST doing his impersonation of 'brundlefly' from 'The Fly' and the only influx at Green Withens was a visit from a group of ar**holes determined to smash Darryl's place up.

Back to the job in hand. Its no good prevarocating.

No real birding this weekend as I've had family staying over. But, as ever, I did make my excuses to scour the area for the White Stork that flew NE over the A1 at Alnwick on Saturday afternoon. No joy at the quarry or at Foxton. All I managed was a nice Barn Owl daylight hunting near the Boulmer RAF base only a field outside my patch where it would have been a tick, and a pair of Buzzards nearby. I was positive that the foul weather today would have grounded the stork somewhere locally.

Today, as the weather had made a good improvement and was quite mild and sunny, I walked Bunty from Boulmer, north to Longhoughton Steel to look for Wheatears. None.

Best here were 2 White Wagtails, 9 Knot, 22 Dunlin, 32 Turnstone, 6 Ringed Plover and 3 Grey Plover. Info came through late morning saying that the Stork had been soaring over the same stretch of A1 again and appears to have landed near Hampeth just off the A1 at the Shilbottle turn. I knew it. So, straight onto the blower to tell JWR who lives near by to see if he could find it, but was told that he was the bird's finder yesterday. Tell your mates why not...

Later in the afternoon I had another half hearted search of that area but there was still no sign.

One day it will all come together, I'm sure.