A long tale...

In a solid overcast drizzling dawn, John and myself headed up to Goswick to call in on the juvenile Long-tailed Skua that has frequented the golf course there for the last few days.

At first it wouldn't play ball, or should I say golf, and remained elusive hidden away at the northern most extremity of the fairways. After a little stalking and a lot of a soaking we managed decent views of this usually pelagic pirate.

Clearly we weren't going to do as well as our peers on the photographic front, so we headed back to the car to dry and have refreshments.

Next stop, Budle Bay. From the laybye, viewing here is always a chore with loads of birds around but most of them a long way off. Still we manged a few Grey Plover, 4 Little Egret and a load of Pink footed Geese before we cut or losses and headed around to Stag Rocks for better views of last weeks nemesis the White winged Black Tern.

At Stag, all was quiet so we walked out to Budle Point. Things were much better here with a nice juv Black Tern, a juv Roseate Tern, maybe 20 Arctic, Common and Sandwich Terns, an Arctic Skua,  a Kingfisher, 60+ Pale and Dark bellied Brent Geese, 300+ Pink footed Geese and a Red breasted Merganser. Unfortunately despite spending over an hour looking there was no sign of the aforementioned WWBT so we called it a day and headed back to the car.

In the laybye here we bumped into bird artist extraordinaire, Darren Woodhead and his young son scanning the sea.After exchanging pleasantries we were about to leave when the lad shouted and waved. The kid had just found the White winged Black Tern off the lighthouse! Thats what 10 year old eyes can do for you...

After som initially confusing directions we all managed to see the bird well before it danced its way south towards Bamburgh Beach. An educational bird.

Our final stop was to be a quick scan at Monk's House Pool ( of Ennion fame). Here a juv Little Stint and 4 Black tailed Godwits were the highlight.

Not a bad few hours out with 6 species of tern, you could forget it is October already!

Frustrating stuff...

The morning dawned very bleak indeed, with heavy sleet and leaden skies for the first hour. Despite this, John and myself headed up to the far north of the county to check the wide sandy bay of Goswick and Cheswick for the Black Scoter that has been around for a couple of weeks. From previous experience of this bird in past years, its one of those individuals that you need to 'get your eye in' before picking it out.

A busy Sunday at Cheswick Sands viewing north.

and viewing South...

Today was no different. In the gloom, early on,all the scattered scoter were either drab first year males or females, with many birds too far off to identify. As the sun came out, I called a false alarm as a nice adult male Common Scoter with extensive yellow on its bill was lit like a beacon.  Closer scrutiny revealed it to be a phony black scoter though as the yellow didn't have that swollen, spongy appearance that the Black Scoter has, As we scanned, a few more male Commons looked very bright in the low sun, but we couldn't find the target.

It was frustrating later when it was reported twice, especially when we had been there looking at the exact same time as the first report. To be honest, we did the usual birders thing and diss the report, but there were a lot of birds out there so we could have missed it, even though we kept picking out a female Velvet Scoter despite us moving from one end of the beach to the other.

Anyway, we did manage the Velvet Scoter, 3 nice Great Northern Diver ( one very close in the surf, and two together at half distance all at the same time), 8 -10 Long tailed Ducks inc a few fine males, 6ish Red throated Divers, 6ish Razorbills inc 2 in summer plumage and 2+ Shag.

(Numbers increased later with 150 Long tailed Duck! Black throated Diver, the Black Scoter, 3 Jack Snipe, Merlin, Twite and Short eared Owl by Ross Ahmed)

Two Tundra Bean Geese, a pair., with 7 Greylags in shot.

The male Bean Goose at the bottom.

12 of the 16 Russian White-fronted Geese.

We returned to the car park at Cheswick and noticed a few geese flying around about a fields length to the north, so we went to check them out. I'm please we did, as the 100+ strong flock of Greylags also held 16 Russian White-fronted Geese and 2 cracking Tundra Bean Geese, showing very well in the, now, sunny weather.

On the return, 2 Skylarks were singing and a Stonechat fed from the fence line.

All was well...