April

 Last time, I mentioned the possibility that we were experiencing a ‘false spring’, however, it has continued until this post too. In my notebook, the last time precipitation gets a mention was on 16^th March with an odd drizzle shower. Since then, we have had dry but cold weather, often in bright sunny days. 

 Another sunny day on the 29^th March brought the first Hairy footed Flower Bees or our garden. Always an absolute pleasure to see as they bump from flower to flower in a cartoon like fashion.

 By the 29^th, up to 150+ Kittiwakes were back around the Howick / Cullernose cliffs while 31 Whooper Swans flew N in two parties of 22 and 9.

 Another Boulmer search on the 30^th found that the female Black Redstart was still present, but the male was long gone. 9 Purple Sandpipers were on the rocks. In the afternoon on a visit to Amble we found a colony of Tawny Mining Bees in a raised bed by the Memorial. Lots of small males danced around the soil interspersed by a few bright tawny orange females.

 March bowed out with more Whooper Swans heading over Howick back to the Icelandic breeding grounds. 27 came over very low, you could almost feel the down draught from the wing beats.

 The first week of April finally saw an emergence of butterflies around the patch with several Peacocks, a Comma, a Red Admiral, 2 Small Tortoiseshells and a few Large White. More Hairy footed flower Bees and a few Dark Edged Bee Flies too.

Dark edged Bee Fly

Comma

Hairy footed Flower Bee, male.

A late afternoon walk at Boulmer on 4^th  was still cold but a few migrants battled on. A smart male White Wagtail  was with half a dozen black and white Pieds, a Lesser black backed Gull flew N followed by 3 Sandwich Terns. A good number of 32 Shelducks kept company with a  Pale bellied Brent Goose.

Pale bellied Brent with the Shelducks

Male White Wag...

For a change on the 6^th April we walked from Cullernose Point to Craster, hoping for a Wheatear sighting but that plan failed. We did make it worthwhile though with a close Raven, the first Willow Warbler, 2 Blackcaps, 4 Swallows and 2 Sand Martins of the year.

Now the evenings are lighter there is more time to be spent in the field ( while neglecting jobs at home), it could just do with warming up to 15 or so degrees…

 In the fine spell, a few moths kept the trap going while a nice spider graced the bathroom...

Acleris literana

Brindled Pug

Early Tooth Striped

Harpactea hombergi only my second, both from the bathroom.

Purple Thorn

Finally, on a cool sunny day last Sunday we checked out the new scrapes at Alnmouth Buston Links. It looked well for waders and wildfowl but not today.4 Shoveler and 2 pairs of nesting Lapwing were the highlight, 3 Whooper Swans moved N while the first Grasshopper Warbler of the year reeled unseen from a thick bramble at Hipsburn.

Male Lapwings very vocal and acrobatic.

Shoveler

This Yellowhammer sang from the ground in the car park at the cricket club for 5 minutes.

Green days....

 Sunday was a bit quiet so I got up early for a walk north along the coast to Craster. It was bright and cool with  a light S breeze. Its great to be out early at this time of year, I didn't see another person for the first two hours.

A slow wander north along the coast path was very pleasant. A few Yellowhammers, 3 Grey Partridges and 2 Greenland Wheatear were about the only things of note but the soundscape of singing birds, noisy Kittiwakes and gently rolling waves was relaxing.

The Bathing House with Longhoughton Steel, Boulmer in the background.

Craster Farm

This view south shows the majority of my local patch. We live in the village you can see in the trees. 

Kittiwake watching me.

Razorbill below my feet.

The view from Cullernose Point

Thrift and the marzipan smell of gorse.

Greenland Wheatear

Whitethroat

Yellowhammer ( do you think!)

A few other things were noted, a single Painted Lady in off, 3 Wall Brown, masses of Spring Squill in large patches all along the short turf. 

Painted Lady

Spring Squill

A carpet of Spring Squill with Dunstanburgh Castle in the distance.

This post is a bit photo heavy so I'll keep the text down a bit. On the way back, I noticed a bird flying south across the field behind Cullernose Point. It looked odd, but familiar? Green Woodpecker! Another patch mega. Not new here, but I've only had two others, winter 2009 /10 and spring 2017. I tried to take a record shot but the camera would not lock on. I must get the settings for viz mig worked out soon. I saw the bird well enough to believe it was a female...

Green Woodpecker south at Cullernose

Away day?

 This morning, for the first time this year, I went birding away from our village all of three miles to Boulmer. 

The main difference is that I took the car to go birding instead of going on foot and I met with John for 'recreation and exercise' in a socially distant, safe, healthy outdoor environment in an attempt to bolster my flagging mental health. That's just about all caveats and boxes ticked I think?

Although the route is easily walkable, driving saves so much time. Instead of a 6 miles round trip hike laden with scope, tripod, camera, rucksack and flask, there is more time to spend actually looking for birds rather than just yomping along on auto pilot.

In the end, it was breezy and bitterly cold in the wind so birds were few and far between with little to note. 90 Sanderling on the Foxton beach, 51 Golden Plover in a coast field, 1 Grey Wagtail, several Rock Pipits, 2 Stonechats 2 pairs of Lapwings displaying, 5 Buzzards and 18 Common Scoter N were as good as it got.

Back at home a few more interesting birds were around including three for the patch year list. The Hooded Crow and 2 Barn Owls hunting together were standard, an adult Mediterranean Gull giving that high pitched call over our house and this evening a Red legged Partridge calling from the Peregrine spot on top of the Hips Heugh. Red leg is rarer here than Peregrine, this bird being my first since 2019 so it was very welcome.   I was going to try a digi scoped record shot but when I came out with my phone the bird had gone.

The other two year birds were seen yesterday with Lesser black backed Gull and Chiffchaff along the coast path.

The moth trap was just as slow with a lone Chestnut for the Garden Moth Scheme last night.

Above the darker of the Barn Owl pair out this morning, the female I believe, showed well but I cocked up the camera settings. 

The paler male Barn Owl stays a bit more distant.

Yellowhammer at Seaton Point

A sunny day.

And what better than to head down to the coast before first light to see what is around as the sun rises.
I met John at Boulmer first thing. As we scanned from the car park there were plenty of birds to see - a Pale Bellied Brent Goose swam with a couple of Shelducks and there were loads of gulls milling about. We hoped that last week's Ros's might drop by, but it didnt, nor did the highly unseasonal Whimbrel seen the other day by Ben on the pool behind the pub ( Bull's Mere).

As the sun rose, good numbers of divers began moving around and soon we had logged 43 Red throated Divers N and 3 Great Northerns in with them. As they headed north, a steady movement of Pink footed Geese went south totalling 180. Also moving at sea were 4 Goldeneye, 6 Common and 1 Velvet Scoter with good numbers of auks.

In the flooded field were 70+ Lapwing and more gulls.

We wandered along to Longhoughton Steel where the newly exposed shore held lots of waders including 18+ Bar tailed Godwit, 251 Curlew, 600+ Golden and 5 Grey Plover, 13 Purple Sandpipers, 20+ Turnstone, 17 Knot, 100+ Dunlin and 66 Sanderling.

A male Peregrine almost caught a Lapwing over the sea but lacked the stamina.

A few ducks were around including 30 Wigeon, 40 Mallard and 10 Shelduck but 3 Gadwall in-off were more surprising.

The only passerines noted were 2 Stonechat, 10 Pied Wagtail, 2 Rock Pipit and about 6 Song Thrushes.

After tea and a scone we had a look up to High Newton where we walked across the fields to Football Hole and back by the Tin Church.

A local told us he had seen two Short eared Owls here this morning but we couldnt find them. Apart from the lovely sunshine and sea views the best we had were 24 Goldeneye, 100+ Golden Plover, 4+ Yellowhammer, Grey Partridge, Treecreeper and Goldcrest.

To Bamburgh and back.

We headed off north this morning, though not far, Bamburgh and back.

On the way, first stop at sunrise was Embleton to see if the Waxwings found by Gary Woodburn ( and present since January) were still around. After a short hunt we found two in a garden near the main road. Photographing them in the poor dawn light, was always going to be tricky, but the birds were very confiding so we were quite close. These images are only very slightly cropped to shape. We were also pointing our cameras in the vague direction of bedroom windows, so after snapping a few shots we left the residents to their privacy!

From here was had a short tea stop at Monks House Pool, Seahouses where 13 Shoveler were quite frisky alongside 20+ Teal, several Tufted Ducks, Mallard, Coot and Little Grebe. The dunes- working Exmoor Ponies came to see us, one enjoying a jammy dodger from John before continuing to munch the coarse grasses down to a reasonable level to increase the local flora.

Budle Bay was next up, with its daunting expanse of mud flats.

Spotted Redshank feeding in creek.

The wintering Spotted Redshank was racing up and down the creek feeding behind three Shovelers constantly that, I assume, were churning up edible morsels for it. Also here were masses of wildfowl including many Teal, Wigeon, Shelduck, 300 Pale bellied Brent Geese, 1000 Pink footed Geese. The waders were in equally large numbers with many Bar tailed Godwit being the highlight. A lone Little Egret looked the part fishing in the close creek.

A nearby feeding station was to be our final stop of the morning. Marsh Tits used to frequent here but, as with this species across the rest of Northumberland, this site now seems devoid of them with none reported in the hide logs since last February. Still we enjoyed nice views of Nuthatch, Treecreeper, Great spotted Woodpecker, Yellowhammer, various Tits and finches.

With the weather not being too bad either, it turned out to be a nice morning all round.

Nuthatch

Great spotted Woodpecker

Yellowhammer with a lot of 'pine bunting' chestnut streaking below its throat. Many yellowhammers can show these marks to a greater or lesser degree. 

Last night the first decent moth of 2017 came, an Acleris cristana, a scarce species up here, this is only the 13th for Northumberland.

Acleris cristana, the 13th for Northumberland.

Spring Buntings...

Sunday morning down at the Coquet Estuary at Warkworth is never a bad thing, but its even better when there are unexpected blue skies and sunshine.

We followed the usual route via the estuary viewpoints. The only migrants noted were Chiffchaffs with one in the top car park and 3+ singing near the river in the village. A female Eider looked quite incongruous against a wooded back ground feeding well up stream near the road bridge. A few Snipe and and 5 Gadwall were seen.

There seemed to be more passerine activity this week with several pairs of Reed Bunting, Stonechat, Meadow Pipits etc all in fine fettle singing and chasing around potential nesting sites. Although we didn't see any Short-eared Owls, a Barn Owl did a brief lap of the car park hill.

A Stoat coming out of Ermine waited near a small reed bed before vanishing out of sight.

Yellowhammer

Reed Buntings

A real highlight was a nice flock of buntings at a pheasant feeder near Birling Carrs. There were 15+ each Yellowhammer and Reed Bunting with Tree Sparrow, Grey Partridge and a male Sparrowhawk for company. Nearby a field held 23 Whooper Swans, a Stock Dove while Buzzards soared over distant woodland.

Stock Dove