Bank Holiday Sunday.

What a lovely morning its been . The sun was shining giving everything a lovely autumn glow, it was calm and mild, just the day to be pottering around the Warkworth patch.

Before that though, John came to seek me and we popped up to the field flash alongside the A1 at North Charlton. The rapidly dwindling water body held a good few waders with 3 Green Sandpipers, 2 Common Sandpipers, 13 Ruff and a Greenshank with the 100+ Lapwings.

From here it was back down the coast to avoid the Great North Cycle Ride that causes chaos on the roads every August Bank Holiday. We began at the Warkworth Beach car park area where we enjoyed a surprising number of common migrants under these conditions, best being a nice female Redstart and 2 Reed Warblers with 3 Blackcaps, 5 Sedge Warblers, 6 Whitethroats, 6 Chiffchaff and 18+ Willow Warblers. A steady movement of hirundines flew south while oddities included a Nuthatch and a family of Bullfinches in the car park scrub. The Nuthatch in particular is very unusual on the coast.

As the car park filled with day trippers we headed off down to the Marina car park to look for waders.
A massive tide had left the place looking like someone had pulled the plug and consequently all of the birds were scattered to the four corners. 2 juvenile, gingery, Black tailed Godwits were with the usual fare, but there seemed less than last week. Also of minor note were 8 Grey Herons and 5 Little Egret fishing while a female Sparrowhawk came down river in full hunting mode.

It was off home at lunchtime now the cyclists had migrated south. In our garden, 2 yellow juvvy Willow Warblers were with a male Blackcap in the elder.

I'm off work now for a couple of days and there may be the possibility of some seawatch weather in the offing. Here's keeping everything crossed and hoping for some overdue patch ticks...

A quick sketch done as soon as I got in the house, totally from memory.