On the Tip...

Widdrington Tip that is.

I used to live only half a mile from here when it attracted Glaucous Gulls and Hooded Crows every winter. The land fill has been closed now for many years and has been planted over with alder, birch and willow forming a wet 'carr' type habitat. Its excellent for wildlife in general but is only a small size, maybe  half a km sq, but it has rushy shallow pools, reedmace, some phragmites and rough grass. It holds some nice birds that you would associate with this habitat and today we had a good selection - Woodcock, 4 Snipe ( no Jacks today), 2 Willow Tits, Jays, Sparrowhawk, 9 Crossbills and - Redpolls. No we aren't sick of them. How could you be really, they're fantastic, never still, never boring .

One or two birds down the right hand side are Mealies...

After a tip off from Nigel through the week, we made a very rare visit south of Amble to check them out. We soon found a flock of 40 - 50 birds but they were constantly roving around, giving odd glimpses here and there. After some perseverance, we had a decent look at them, finding a few Mealies in with Lessers, but no candidates from further north. That's not to say there aren't any, later we saw another flock of 25 birds plus small groups flying in from all over. You would need luck to be with you in this habitat.

Lesser Redpolls

 A view across the big lake at Widdrington had a lovely Peregrine sitting on a soil outcrop, maybe digesting a meal. At Stobswood, a single drake Pochard was good, I don't see many up in my neck of the woods these days and we paid a visit to DBCP to take some snaps of the confiding drake Goosander. Its a pity the light was poor.

And that was about it really, a pleasant morning out, now where is the spring...

A heavily edited image to get some colour on a dark day....