You dare....

A county tick...

I'm just waiting for the first blogger who titles their Cattle Egret post 'Egret's I've had a few' and that's my monitor booted...

Anyway, yesterday on Holy Island, a fantastic county bird was identified after a three day guise as a Little Egret, an understandable oversight considering this is only the second for Northumberland and the first since 1986. That bird was on private land and seen only by Roger Forster, 'Hexham' Ray Craig and John Proudlock.

As you can imagine all the local county listers, including yours truly, were keen to get onto Lindisfarne to add this fallen blocker to ever slowing lists. Unfortunately for those tardy enough to have a cup of tea and half a bar of dairy milk at the car before going on site, by nine oclock it had taken cover in the only sheltered garden on the Crooked Lonnen.

The garden of the white chalet is the only inaccessible tree filled spot on the island, but it is quite small so we just had to wait it out and scan through the straggled hawthorns and sheep mesh until our goal wandered into view on the lawn.

I managed a couple of just about reasonable views as it pulled unseen morsels from the grass and that was it. It filtered out of sight, a bit like our enthusiasm, so we wandered off towards the harbour.

On the rocket fields were 380+ Teal, scanned for yankee versions, and 60+ Pale bellied Brents.

Thats probably the listing excitement for this year so its back onto the patch, where I still cant find a Yellowhammer. I know where they are though...

...while us filthy county listers were shamefully abandoning ship, a well known Stringer  Pied Piper has lured them to his lair....