Week 6..

Sometimes I wonder if the planet is actually facing the apocalypse? I know the population has survived serious pandemics before, but maybe the collapse of the economy is what does it, not the disease? In the great Spanish Flu pandemic of a century ago, people didn't have much anyway and there was not the share holding consumerism of today.

On the News this week airlines are reporting that they are haemorrhaging money and may go bust, the hospitality industry looks like it will be in tatters and all of this impacts on other things too such as property ownership and renting etc plus all of the small businesses reliant on these larger sectors. The Government cant pay all of this forever...

Maybe the plug has been pulled and we are slowly spiralling our way down the drain...

On that cheery note, birding crack seems a bit frivolous, but here it is.

This week I have added ...

Sandwich Tern. On call only, though it is already on the garden list from sight records. I had seen 6 birds fishing just off our coast path and when I got home I realised I could hear them calling as they chased around!

Reed Bunting 1 female was on the wires along our drive. I wonder why they and yellowhammers don't come to my feeders that border the back field? Birds fly overall the time and are present only a hundred metres away in hedges. Youd think the flock of sparrows would pull them in, but I haven't had one at seed for about 7 years!

Moorhen. I heard the kek-kek-kek call clearly about 3 or 4 times while I was in the bathroom at 11.30pm. Coot was my first reaction until I listened to some nocturnal calls on xeno-canto that clearly showed my caller to be a Moorhen. I've never seen a moorhen in or from my garden, but at least I did hear it so its going on the list.

This takes my full list to 134 species seen or heard from the garden. I have had 3 new garden birds during lockdown, with Teal, Moorhen and White tailed Eagle added. I also took, retrospectively, Guillemot on call ( not on the lockdown list). That's not as bad as it sounds because every August I can hear the fledged juvvies calling for the adults on a calm sea nearby, I've just never thought of them as garden birds before. But, as long as there are folk ticking scoter from a recording, I'm having it.

What a Moorhen 'tick'should look like...

I also have to confess to something.

This week I have had two seawatches. 'What!' You exclaim. 'You're not following lockdown rules there!'

Well, I have been noting that birders across the land are out all day long 'excercising' tens of miles from home and just happening to take in any good bird that has been around, so I thought sod it, I am going for a look at the sea.

For me this involves walking 540.63 mtrs or, in old money, a third of a mile. Measured on Google Maps as accurately as possible. As the crow flies, or as the guillemot calls, the shortest distance from my garden to salt water is 236.82 mtrs. I then sit down a slope, alone, for 1 hour and walk back. Cullernose Point can wait til autumn.

Two decent spells this week had 15 Black tailed Godwit N ( patch mega), 2 Long tailed Ducks N, 1 Arctic, 4 Common and 9 Sandwich Terns N on one visit and on the other 4 Scaup S , 1 Puffin N, 2 Red throated Divers N plus good numbers of Gannets and Razorbills with many more auks further out. Not bad for spring.

For a while I forgot the shitshow taking place around us and enjoyed some normality. 

Stay safe all.

Week 5.

This is getting to be as long as the kids summer holidays. Providing we are all keeping safe I am getting quite used to it too. The thing about COVID is that we don't really know if we are safe because it has an incubation period of two weeks, so God only knows what is in store for us in May.

The weather has been kind since March when all we seemed to get was rain and storms, now we have wall to wall sunshine. Living on the East coast means it is still quite cool in the breeze from the sea, but in sheltered spots its very nice.

I am really enjoying this garden watching. Usually when work beckons we never know what has gone on or over our small territory and even working from home often means we are stuck indoors for long periods but, for me, it means I am in the field at 4pm instead of 6.30pm and sprinkle in some lunch and tea breaks the area is nicely covered.

In the sunny weather the invertebrates have taken centre stage lately though there have been some good patch birds since my last outing on here.

New to the list include -

14th April - Peregrine 1 fine adult soaring over the field behind us flushing everything .
16th - Raven 1 low over the garden N, heading back to its nest site.
17th - Short eared Owl 1, a true quality patch bird here and only my 4th in 11 yrs. I was watching the back when everything lifted. I scanned and couldnt see anything then quite high up I put the glasses on a flapping circling bird that turned out to be the Owl. It continued to climb higher, almost into clouds before I lost it to the West. A bird obviously on return migration and a very acceptable addition here.
17th - Sand Martin 1, inevitable at some stage.
19th - Merlin 1 female. On Sunday a friend has two Avocets flying North over Boulmer. That means they were heading my way! I was out in the garden in no time but they must have hugged the shore and remained out of sight. As I viewed from my 'seawatching' spot, pandemonium broke out in the wood and I scanned up to see a close Merlin dash along the wood edge and out of sight. A patch year tick too.
19th - Mute Swan 1. The 'whoosh, whoosh' of wings attracted me to the distant swan as it flew low over the woods .
20th -  Whimbrel 3 flew N out the back calling as they went.

These take my LockdownGardenList up to 74 species including 6 species of raptor since 20th March.

 Still no Collared Dove or Mistle Thrush.

As for insects, I have been taking a keen interest in all, manner of creepy crawlies with a few new species for me and the garden...

Harpactea hombergi a tiny woodlouse spider look-a-like found in our bath, as you might expect. New to me.

Above -  Male and Female Hairy Footed Flower Bees. Find of the year in the garden surely, well after White tailed Eagle, but these tiny fairies are usually found south of Leeds and there are only a few Northumberland records, so I was over the moon with these.

This tiny bee on a shrub in our garden is Andrena haemorrhoa Orange tailed Mining Bee. New.

Holly Blue made a welcome return one day later than last year. Still rarer than Yellow browed Warbler here...

Vestal Cuckoo Bee Bombus vestalis was a good id lesson that I am pleased to have got right first time, confirmed by Steven Falk of the Bee Field Guide fame.

Red Mason Bee Osmia bicornis on our gable.

Zebra Jumping Spider Salticus scenicus, not new to me, but new here the first in 11 yrs of this common spider.

What diversity we have in the house and garden if only we choose to look...

Week 4. Lockdown.

As we now enter week four of the Lockdown, this must be the quietest Easter Weekend in living memory. Its like a mad vision of the future with people referring to the movie 'Contagion' as if it were some sort of documentary. I feel so lucky in that we live in a very rural area with access to our garden and views across open countryside. What it must be like to live in a flat at this time doesn't bear thinking about for me.

The fine weather over the weekend has resulted in hours sat out in the garden recording the wildlife seen, and I feel that I have even learned a little bit. For a start, here, the best times to watch are from dawn until 9am and again from 6pm until dark. Now we all kind of knew this but to have it confirmed when the mid part of the day is almost devoid of life is a good thing. Almost all new species are recorded within these periods.

In the week since my last posting a lot of spring migrants have come through here to be added on to the garden lockdown list. Personally I am only including birds seen or heard from the garden and not from my walks out with Peggy. This has encouraged some ingenuity in order to keep things ticking along.

For example, in 11 years I did not know I could seawatch from the garden!

Balanced on some boards on top of the wall near the compost dump..

Or on the ground facing up the hill and towards the coast path.

Another angle on my precarious position. I just stand up there behind the scope, on the wall.

The view NE. A Kittiwake from the cliff colony is in shot. The problem is, that bit of sea is too far out to identify anything but Gannets.

I did hit on a nice male Wheatear for the garden list though.

Since the last post, I am now on 67 species for the Lockdown period. A couple of Garden Firsts in the lot are Teal calling over in the dark and 54 Gannets N this morning from the seawatch of about 10 minutes. Also included are Swallow, House Martin, Blackcap, Willow Warbler, Fieldfare, Brambling, Siskin, LBBG, Common Gull, Kittiwake, Nuthatch, Barn Owl and Wheatear. I think I will post a full list as I get my counts and list numbers mixed up...

Amongst other wildlife in the garden or from it are Brown Hare, Rabbit, Wood Mouse, Bank Vole, Hedgehog, Roe Deer and Pipistrelle . The warm spell improved the moth and butterfly numbers too..

 

Bank Vole coming to an apple left for it.

 

Small Tortoiseshell, Peacock and Small White seen.

Tree Sparrows have started nesting.

Lockdown Weekend again.

As we enter week 3 of working from home I thought an update is in order. As with last weekend apart from an odd dog walk most of the time has been spent in the gardening. I am in danger of making it too tidy! It will soon revert to its happy unkempt style as summer progresses...

Down to wildlife. Like every other birder in the UK I did fancy a Common Scoter on the garden list as many were on the move, migrating N in the darkness, only detected by call, but didn't have the commitment to sit for hours in the dark on the off chance, so I just popped out for a listen occasionally. I was out for a duck on this front, hearing only Golden Plover, Curlew, Tawny Owl and possibly Teal but cant be sure on that one.

The Nocmiggers all did well while they were in bed. I've seen some great comments on that front too. The best for me was one that said something along the lines of 'Of course you can tick it, after all you have gone to the trouble of setting the equipment up outside then listening back to it' . Mate, you have not seen or even heard that bird, you have heard a recording!

Another comment suggested that 'Observatories count them so yes you can tick them' Durrr... er no... the obs add them to the site record which is different altogether. Say, if you move into a house where the previous owner recorded 100 species before you. You wouldn't add them to your list but they would be the start of a house list because they had been recorded on that site.

Is it just me? this isn't rocket science. Imagine on a day in early May and you have a team out doing a county bird race and you are going for a new record. Just get half a dozen sets of nocmig kit borrowed, set them up at midnight on local migration hotspots etc and the next day add the species to your actual list. You will obliterate the record!

To be fair, I am quite interested in the night time stuff, but its the reaction of the people that irks. I will approach this subject again I bet...

Right enough of that, back to the real stuff.

Leveret in its form.

The adult Hare and the leveret.

Grey Partridge from our drive.

On Saturday, 31 Pink footed Geese flew N, followed later by a pair of honking Canadas. A Linnet flew south while the mammal list was quite good. We had 2 Hedgehogs, 4 Roe Deer, a Brown Hare and its leveret and a Bank Vole.

First thing on Sunday a line of 4 ducks was flying fast N. A quick glance with the bins was quite surprising with 4 imm redhead Goosanders, only my second record for the garden after a pair flew south one New Years day some years back. At the same time, a female Kestrel flew south, then later a male was out the back field. My first Peacock butterfly of the year was the only insect.

Lockdown Garden List stands at 50 now and am still missing Mistle Thrush, Siskin, Redpoll Common and Lesser black backed Gulls and most summer migrants though a single Swallow and a Willow Warbler were only a few hundred metres away when I took Peggy for her walk to the coast path this morning so they wont be long in becoming additions. Hopefully.

Garden Tick #131

Well you couldn't make this up. Yesterday and today I have had a stinking head cold ( no, not the CV) with a snotty nose, runny eyes and a headache. If I hadn't been working from home I think I would have called in a very rare sick day, but as I spend the day on my computer in the bedroom, I just decided to sit it out.

I glance out of the window occasionally and pop the dog for a walk but other than that, there isn't much doing and on the bird front, the last few days have been dire.

Until this afternoon. The phone rang and as I answered, one of our neighbours, Julie was a bit out of breath and in a state of unrest...now Julie is a birder. Not a twitcher but she has always birded locally and does WeBs counts etc and certainly knows her stuff. She rang me once with news of a Turtle Dove in our Village Hall car park while I was on Holy Island searching for migrants. I have still not had Turtle Dove on my patch. So this call pricked up my ears.

'Stewart, there's a Golden Eagle over your house now!' 'I saw it getting mobbed by four Buzzards, great views!'

I dashed to the back window for a look, nothing.  I hung up on her, put my shoes on and ventured on to the drive. There was a still eerie silence with garden birds doing those small thin 'seeep' calls when hiding... after half an hour still nothing.

Then, it happened. I looked up to a great dark shadow low overhead. It was like one of the wraiths from Lord of the Rings only 50 feet up. An adult, raggy arsed Eagle glided, never flapping, low west towards Howick Hall and out of sight behind the small hill with pines on top. Luckily I managed to rattle off some photos as it passed...

I shouted to Jane who was working in our loft, that I had seen the Eagle but it looked like a White-tailed not Golden, but a few things didnt ring true. This is where confusion reigned..

A few moths ago a Golden Eagle was seen near Longhoughton which is 2 miles from us and again at Thropton about 20 miles west. I believe that bird was an immature with white in the wings and tail , so this is a different all dark bird. What is going on here I don't know. I couldn't see any jesses or tags or even an ariel ?

Looking at my images below the bird seems to have a long neck, secondaries pinched in at the base and narrower wings. Because of this I put the word out that it was a Golden Eagle, but something niggled.

Social Media in some cases can be a fantastic thing and this time it came to my aid in several ways. On Twitter, a Police officer contacted me to say my bird was 'Beaky C11' A Golden Eagle released in the southern borders in 2018 and he was satellite tracked. Detail would be sent to me in due course. Eventually it turned out not to be the errant 'Beaky'.

While this was going on, some eminent birders were chattering that the bird was a standard immature White tailed Eagle, maybe a second year bird as it was quite dark. Looking. First off with this assertion was Alex Lees who tagged in Paul French. Then a few others chipped in. Our very own Alan Tilmouth messaged to say he believed  it was an imm WTE too. Then Bryan Reins who lives on Mull and a few others all convinced of the birds identity.

So where had I gone wrong with this usually straight forward pair? First of all context. We are hardly knee deep in  Aquilas on the coast of Northumberland but I am familiar with both species. Of course, this habitat is more WTE than GE but who knows what happens with birds from reintroduction schemes, of which both species can be a part of.

I also had taken the seed of Golden Eagle sown at the start that should have been questioned more.

Still I was lucky enough to see it and get some passable record shots that helped in its eventual identification, and as Martin Garner would say, 'We are always learning' . On the plus side of this, not only is White tailed Eagle a mega garden tick it is also a claw back from several others on to my county list, so everyone's a winner!

White tailed Eagle goes on my garden list at Number 131 and is the first good bird I've had here in yonks, so I'm glad to have it! It almost beats the Rosefinch in to top place!

Garden Lockdown List 44.
Garden List All time 131
Northumberland List 348

An Immature White tailed Eagle over Howick. A Golden Eagle would never get into this state!

The Weekend

In the garden again today, but with a biting northerly blowing there were few birds and no butterflies or anything much of note really. The highlight was likely 4 Hares chasing around just over our garden wall this afternoon. More of the same tomorrow I think... Here are some garden shots to keep the blog going...

Four Clouded Drabs from last nights meagre catch showing the range of colours.

Locked and Loaded.

Since my last post a few more species were added to the list.

Yesterday, I got up and out quite early to feed the birds. In the first 5 minutes, 5 new species were added, almost the first 5 birds seen!

To begin with from indoors I heard a Greenfinch singing outside so I went to check in time to see 3 fly across to the village hall. Next I stood on the wall in the far NW corner to scan the harrowed strip in the back field for Wheatears. Of these there were none, but there were a pair of Pied Wagtails and a male Yellowhammer scuffling in the soil. As I watched a call attracted my attention, a partially displaying male Lapwing was tumbling over the top field! They don't breed but in some years the attempt it, maybe theyll have success this time. As I watched the Lapwing a fw Great black backed Gull flew steady South.

The rest of the day was quiet but at midnight a Tawny Owl could be heard in the village wood.

This brings the grand total to 41 species seen or heard from the garden since Saturday.

On Twitter / Bubo a few birders set up a similar garden watch. Out of interest I looked at the list on Bubo only to find participants including ' the excercise walk' and the 'dog walk' in the totals. What the hell is that about? If I did that I would include the North Sea that is not even visible from the garden. To me they are describing a local patch, but to so many people a local patch means a half hour drive to the best hotspot in the area, not a local patch at all, so it doesnt surprise me that the garden isn't good enough for them. At least I can say my local patch is that local it includes my garden. Isn't that the point of BWKM0? Birdwatching from zero kilometres not from 3 kilometres...

After looking at this debacle I decided not to bother on there. Now I see the garden bit has been removed and its just the Lockdown List. Shame.

Oh, even worse, some people were including NocMig birds in the totals! Dear me lads, you have neither seen nor heard the bird so you cant tick it even though it can be added to the garden list. Imagine you are out at work, and on your return your neighbour shows you a photo of a Hoopoe on your lawn. Its like ticking that.

Now the weekend is here, I'll be out a bit more looking. Targets are Siskin, Common Gull, Lesser black backed Gull, Mistle Thrush etc... keeping it real. Out.

Gardening Leave...

I didn't post yesterday, because there wasn't too much new to add on the bird front other than Black headed Gull with 3 flying S overhead.

Other garden wildlife picked up though as the temperature rose in the sunshine. Small Tortoiseshell and Tree Bumblebee were new for the year and in the afternoon an intriguing hoverfly stopped briefly. I though at first it was a Bee Fly, it was overall ginger and furry but without the proboscis. It has a pale whitish face too. It was too brief to be sure and I didnt manage a photo but it could have been  Criorhina berberina of the form oxyacanthae that mimics the Common Carder Bumblebee. At this early date I cant see it being anything else.

Mammals made a garden appearance yesterday with an emerging Hedgehog and a Brown Hare in the back field.

The moth trap has been good this last day or two, after a very poor February.

Pale Pinion

Powdered Quaker

Twin-spotted Quaker

Diurnea fagella

Red Sword-grass

Common Quaker

Early Grey

Red Chestnut

The Moth Trap...

BWKN0 ....

My second day working from home from 8am until 4pm sat at the computer with only an odd break away for a cuppa or to let Peggy out. During this time in some nice early spring weather I managged to add a few new species to the garden list.

I was a bit disappointed that there was no obvious overhead passage going on, but some of the locals appeared co-operatively.

First thing a Curlew flew south over the garden. This is not an unusual occurrence but by this time most have moved on inland or further north so I was pleased to get this one out of the way.

A Tractor ploughing a strip of the back field was a good sign and I felt sure it would add something like a Lesser black backed or Med Gull but no, only a few Herring Gulls attended but it did flush Skylark and Rook while a Stock Dove landed with 19 Woodpigeons on the fine tilth afterwards.

Around the feeders and garden itself were Song Thrush, Bullfinch, 2 Sparrowhawks, male and female and a Magpie. A loudly honking Greylag flew very low overhead this afternoon bringing my wildfowl list to one.

Bird list now stand at a respectable 33 species for the last few days.
Late edit - 3 Long tailed Tits over the feeders were forgotten and late last night a calling Redwing emigrating back home was pulled in by the light of the moth trap. Revised Total 35

This post is quite photo heavy to give readers an idea of my garden patch at the present time..

Two angles looking out of the kitchen window facing West. This is a good skyline to watch and the farmland is mainly rough grass and mixed. The hill you can see is the Hips Heugh, it is a cliff on the far side and is part of the Whin Sill geology.

The feeders will have a part to play providing I can get the seed! This is Tree Sparrow Tesco...

Another look facing NW. A Barn Owl sometimes hunts right along the wall edging the drive giving great views from inside the house. It hasn't shown yet...

Along the drive to the old pig sty sheds and copse on the N edge of the garden. It pulls in a few migrants mainly in autumn but you never know.

The main East garden. Viewing more resiricted here but is is sheltered and good for insects. That hedge along the wall top has had Barred Warbler.

Another bird table. This only gets a few bits of food for the shy species that dont want to be in the main flock. The sea is approx 300 mtrs that way.

This tractor was ploughing part of the back field but only these few were attracted. Photo from our drive.

Hen Blackie always arrives as I start feeding the birds.

The Bully returned to the cherry tree in a neighbours garden today.

This Magpie cleared the small birds from the feeders briefly.

Starling was late and had to make do with peanuts.