Newton Point, 11th July 2009

I decided to try and ring some storm petrels at Newton Point last night......

Stormie

Nice arse !!

The session started slowly with the sky staying fairly bright until gone midnight, at about 12.30 it got darker and three storm petrels found thier way to the net..... then at about 1.30 the car battery decided it had had enough and packed up...... COBBLERS !!

This was a real shame, I reckon there would have been more stormies in the next couple of hours if I could have kept the music going...

One consolation was an unexpected ringing tick, not a leach's petrel unfortunately...... but this nocturnal black-headed gull was flapping around the net at about midnight !

Ringing tick !

Newton Point & Newton Pool, 10th July 2009

I had an early morning visit to Newton Point today for some seawatching...... stuff seemed to be on the move a little....

Between 5.30 - 7.00 I had:

2 arctic skuas
3 bonxies
39 manxies
26 common scoter
1 red-throated diver
2 whimbrel (1 getting hassled by an arctic skua !)

Bonxie

Gannet

I did a quick check of the beach at Low Newton on my way to the pool, wader numbers are building here with plenty of redshank, curlew and oycs..... also a few common gulls gathering now too....

At the pool its the same old story, plenty of dabbling ducks and naff all waders.... The water rail showed very well today tho....

Showing well....

Oi !! Beaky !!

cute grebe...

I spent an hour in the hide hoping for a decent wader to drop in....... it didn't. Eventually I had to leave for work, but on my way out I scanned the gulls and noticed this sarnie lurking amongst them.....

"You ain't sin me, right"

Newton Pool & Tin Church, 8th July 2009

Newton would be a great place to go birding if it wasn't for all the people getting right on my tits...

I spent an hour in the hide this evening and saw shit all....... part, or perhaps most, of the reason for this was a constant non stop procession of idiots crashing in and out of the hide.....

Most of these planks were holiday makers who have stumbled away from the beach, have no interest in birds, but are just too nosey to walk past a little wooden structure without trying to get into it !!

Without a decent brain cell between them they are all incapable of reading a fuckin sign too......

The sign on the hide says this....


Somehow these retards manage to translate this to read......

Yep, today I had to put up with a constantly open hide door, screaming kids and a dog trying to sniff my bollox !! Why can't these wankers just leave me alone ?!!

At one point some teal landed on the mud in front of the hide, and grey wagtail dropped in, but this was all short lived. I could hear some fuckwits actually reading the sign out loud, but they still came stomping up the steps and virtually kicked the door in !! Once inside and waving their arms out of the slats they decided "there's no birds, this is boring" !

ARRRRGGGHHHHH !!!..... YOU FUCKIN NOBRASH !! THERE WERE BIRDS HERE BUT YOU LOT SCARED THEM OFF BY CRASHING INTO THE HIDE LIKE A HERD OF STAMPEDING ELEPHANTS....... FUCKIN PLEBS !!!

Mmmmmm......... did I just think that or actually say it out loud ?

Anyway.....I came to the conclusion that the hide should be closed to everyone except me, everyone else can just piss off and leave me in peace. Maybe I should fit a lock to the inside to keep the plebs out !

On the pool today there was nowt new to report, however I was surprised by a very early migrant in the form of a fem/juv redstart along the track by the Tin Church, also a yellow wagtail flew over here calling....

Newton Pool, 7th July 2009

I managed a quick drop in to Newton Pool this evening in hope of that wood or green sand......

It was not to be this time, in fact the pool was once again waderless.....

The juvenile water rail put in a very rapid appearance (and disappearance) as it sprinted across the mud in front of the hide......... Also putting in a brief appearance was a grey wagtail that dropped onto the mud in front of the hide for about 5 seconds before deciding it didn't actually like mud, and buggering off again....

Dabbling duck numbers are still slowly building and today there were 5 fresh juv teal floating about, and gadwall mum was still looking after 7 chicks.....

Teal

Gadwall mum and 3 of the 7

Before I left Low Newton I had a quick scan of the haven, this produced 1 male red-breasted merg, and not a lot else !

Finally, I have it on good authority that there was a red kite floating around the Long Nanny last Friday......... Eh ?...... Hang on a minute..... I was at the Long Nanny last Friday !!

FECKIN ARSE BISCUITS !!

Mystery bird...

The last mystery bird was a spotted flycatcher.

Well done Warren..... Bad luck "Its in the flowers !" you were close with black-capped petrel but not quite there, maybe you need to spend more time in the field !!

spot fly

Here's another....

?

Newton Pool & Long Nanny, 5th July 2009

AT LAST A DECENT WADER ON THE POOL !!

....DECENT !!

OK its "just a LRP"...... but this is a proper Newton rare ! This is only my second ever LRP here so I was delighted with this bird..... That's what I love about local patching, otherwise regular species can take on a whole new dimension.......

Also on the pool today........ this dunlin.

Dunlin

Wildfowl numbers continue to build, gadwall are now at 2 adults, one of which has a brood of 7 chicks, a great breeding record for the pool, also 2 shoveler are new in.....

"Hello old bean...... we are new in, don't you know...."

The pool was buzzing with hirundines today, lots of young swallows and good number of sand martins too...

Juv swallows...... very cute.....

After the pool I decided to head up to the Nanny to see how the terns are doing.... Nothing of great note bird wise, just 1 common tern amongst the colony, and still plenty of curlew on the Nanny.

The good news is that there are now 33 little tern chicks on site, 1 fledged yesterday (hurrah !!) and I saw a few others today that don't look very far off maiden flights at all, so lets keep those fingers crossed eh.....

Newton Pool & Long Nanny, 3rd July 2009

THERE ARE WADERS AT THE POOL !!....

Mmmmm...... Not quite the wood sand I hoped for but its a start.

I sat in the hide for a bit this morning to see if anything dropped in...... the 2 waders above did.

A very skulky juv water rail proved an absolute pig to see...... eventually after 1 hour it started to emerge..... my finger was hovering over the button ready to digiwaste it, but then I heard this booming voice, followed by clattering and banging as group of happy ramblers attempted to enter the hide..... In true water rail fashion it legged it straight back into the rushes allowing me just one fuzzy pic of it..... ARSE !!

I'm off !!

The group of 4 happy rambler men crashed into the hide tripping over their posh carbon walking sticks.... they all had about 5 sticks each..... do they really need these to walk along a beach ?

They sat down and started talking, well more sort of shouting really !!...... a couple started pointing out of the viewing slats and then one of them decided to fiddle with one of the flaps that came crashing down with a loud bang ensuring everything else in front of the hide buggered off too !!........ FFS !!

Finally just to finish off, one of them started talking to me, and then called me "a good looking lad" ??!!...... EH ??? .....WHAT THE.....??? A compliment indeed, trouble was it came from a 50 something tubby bloke and not a 20 something fit young bird..... Anyway I took that as a cue to leave the hide....

Newton Pool, lovely mud !!

Next I took a quick hike up to the Long Nanny, a few waders were on the Nanny itself, 1 greenshank, 2 common sands, 1 barwit, 1 dunlin and 66 curlew....

The dunes here were heaving with butterflies today, of particular note there were plenty of common blues and I counted at least 13 dark green fritillaries....

Dark green fritillary

Common blue