Stewchat...

I wasnt really out birding today, but the beauty of living in your own local patch is that you can literally just 'pop out', so thats what I did. It was bright and breezy first thing, quite mild, but that soon turned to that awful heavy drizzle for an hour, but that too, changed to a brighter mild and pleasant afternoon.

First thing this morning a female Sparrowhawk attacked our feeders with such speed and force that I didnt even see if it took anything. I think it probably did.

I then walked Peggy around the village wood that was very quiet, with nothing at all going into the notebook. The return walk down the lane had 50 Linnets on overhead wires and a lone Fieldfare flushed from the village hall waterworks, calling.

Village Wood

I then took the car all of 400 yards to Seahouses Farm layby to check the gulls in the field ( it was raining after all). There were 200+ Black headed and maybe half a dozen each of Common and Herring Gulls but no sign of the Med Gull today.

Our village in those trees and if you click on it, some of the gulls.

The coast fields muck heap.

From here the rain stopped so it was time for a stand and watch from the Rumbling Kern. The sea was deathly quiet with no passage at all other than 1 Gannet north, 8 Herring Gulls S and 2 Goodsanders S overhead. On the shore were 1 Grey Plover, 10 Curlew, 9 Oystercatcher, 5 Redshank and a Turnstone while in the small amount of scrub at the haven and dump were 7+ Robins, 5+ Dunnock, 1 Goldcrest, 28+ Chaffinches, 1 Rock Pipit and a Stonechat. 

I didnt bump into another person at all in two hours!

It was now time for home as we were going out for lunch to Doxford Hall....

The Bathing House from Rumbling Kern

The actual Rumbling Kern, a sea cave that thunders at certain stages of tide.

The Haven view south from the Kern.