Tin Church & Newton Point, 22nd July 2007

PATCH TICK !!!!

……. TREE SPARROW !!!

Yep you heard me right….. Tree sparrow…..

Yeah…… OK…… I know what your thinking…… “Tree sparrow ????… Jeeez that’s boring !!”

Well actually….. BOLLOX !! I reckon they’re ace…..

……. So I arrived at Newton this morning still feeling totally shite again, I had my bins, my ringing gear and a bag full of drugs…… unfortunately the drugs were cough sweets and lemsips…. Couldn’t score any disco biscuits at Boots….

Where does snot come from ?? My nose seems to be producing much more snot than it is capable of holding…. Where does it all come from ??

Anyway… did a bit of ringing…. Which was nice,… caught a robin…. Plus a few other things….. Robins are SO cool !! One of my favourites….

Super Cooool Robin

Other thing...

Another other thing....

By early afternoon I felt fuggin awful so I packed up ringing and hatched a plan….

The plan…. Neck all of my drugs at once and go birding till I either pass out or start hallucinating from lemsip/strepsil/ibuprofen/Sudafed overdose….. so…. Off to the Tin Church I went…

The drugs were kicking in and I had to take second glance when I saw a group of sparrows along the quarry house track….. thought I was seeing things…. But sure enough… tree sparrows !! BLINDIN !!

I counted six but unfortunately they disappeared too quick for me to get a pic… still they put a spring in my step… well until I got dizzy….

Next I headed towards Newton Point, I got as far a the cattle grid and bumped into a cracking juv Wheatear, where the has this come from ? It looked really strange but I think that it was maybe a combination of my huge chemical intake and the fact that it was a nice fresh spotty juv…. They have been rumoured to have bred at the Long Nanny the last couple of years, maybe this is from there ?

Spaced out Wheatear

I moved on, but took a turn for the worse…. By the time I got to the point I felt like passing out… Stayed for 5 minutes, noted a shit load of redshank, 5 Turnstone, 2 Whimbrel, 100 odd Golden Plover and few other wadery things…

Felt like shit….. went back to the car….. fell asleep………

Woke up…….. felt like shit……. drove home…..

Tin Church, July 21st 2007

CHRIST I FEEL ILL !!

Got the dreaded man flu….. have spent the last 2 days floating round in a daze of lemsip, cough mixture, prescription chemicals and booze…

Decided this morning I would fight it by heading over to Newton….. BAD MOVE !!

Woke up… felt like shit…

Got to Newton and it was pissing down…. felt like shit

Decided to do the hardcore local patcher thing and stay in the car to sit out the rain, while braving my evil virus……….. and feeling like shit…..

It rained…. I drifted in and out of delirious sleep…occasionally waking in a heap of snot with the shakes and sweats….. It still rained.......

SNOTTY CAR

I woke….. it was raining ……. I felt like shit

I slept……

I woke….. it was still fucking raining…… and I still felt like shit !!!

I slept…..

I woke…………….

Look...........To cut a long story short I drove to Newton, spent about five hours shivering, coughing, sneezing and sleeping in my car….. then I gave up and went home…..

Five hours of my life looked like this.....

..............GOD LIFE IS HORRIBLE !!!!

Newton Pool & Newton Point, July 15th 2007

The pool was calling me today…..

After a mind numbing couple of hours wandering around the Metro Centre I really needed to take a chill pill….. THE METRO CENTRE FOR GODS SAKE, WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING ???!!!!

Must think calm………

…. Imagine you are a loose lily floating down a gentle mountain stream…..

Ahhhhhhhh................................ thats better.....

So… anyway…….off to the pool I trundled, where I was treated to great views of juvenile sedge warblers crashing about in the juncus in front of the hide, and a steady stream of kitts coming in to bathe..

Kitty

Then off to the point… scanning the rocks along the shore there were mixed groups of small gulls and sandwich terns, a few redshank and a common sandpiper. Blimey its slow….. but I guess its still loads better than getting into a punch up with some shell suit clad nobhead over a parking space at the metro centre eh !

I spent a while pissing about trying to get a picture of the gulls before moving on towards the point. Masses of starlings use the shore here for feeding amongst the rotting and festering seaweed… rather them than me..... jeeeez it smells BAD ! !

My crap effort at a gull and sarnie pic

Aren't Starlings BRILLIANT !!

At the point a few curlew were on the most distant rocks and a wheatear decided that it absolutely was not going to let me get a photograph it…

This isn't a wheatear

5 whimbrel flew south over the point calling and it started to drizzle, so back to the car I went…

I stopped to check the trees by the tin church, it was grey, a bit of drizzle and a south easterly,…… wish it was October ! ……… The tin church highlight….. a tatty chiffchaff !!!

High Newton, July 14th 2007

Bleedin ell..its windy ! I mean REALLY windy !!

Wanted to do some ringing today but it was just blowing a gale... manged to get one net up in a really sheltered spot tho...Gave it a couple of hours while doing a bit of DIY in a shed and chatting to some locals !!...........Don't ask !!

Caught the most tatty worn out looking Goldcrest in the history of the universe….. closely followed by one of the reasons for it looking like the Goldcrest equivalent of Dot Cotton.

Dot

"....alright ma"

Also managed to get a Chaffinch, the ever present Dunnock and rather nice House Martin !

Rather nice...

High Newton, July 8th 2007

I hate stinging nettles !!!

Spent this afternoon sorting out my new ringing site near High Newton by the Sea, waded through a bed of stinging nettles.... twice..... and all to get up a couple of nets, there's dedication for you..... or do I mean stupidity ?

Got a couple of nets up and managed to catch a stupid Robin, an angry Blackbird, a chilled out Chaffinch and a dull Dunnock... Rubbish !! .... and just to add insult to injury 2 of the birds were already ringed !! Those buggers who ring down the hill at Low Newton must have been busy....

Dull

Got bored of looking at empty mist nets so decided to boost my totals by doing a few Swallow chicks from the sheds.... ugly aren't they.

Ugly

Late afternoon spent 20 minutes grilling a big flock of swifts which appeared over the site, hoping for that elusive Chimney Swift from yesterday... Later on, I heard there had been an eruption of dodgy Swift sp, square tailed common swift and chimney swift reports throughout the country ! What the hells going on ??? If there's so many about why can't I nail one at Newton ? Mind you if the reports came from the type of pager slaves I met at Newton yesterday I wouldn't be suprised if they were actually Albatross's !!.... talking of which.....

Long Nanny, July 7th 2007

Just back from a day volunteering at the tern site again... had a blinder..... got piss wet through in a thunder storm while digging fence posts into wet sand..... Marvellous

Long Nanny Tern site

Grilled the hundreds terns over and over again… but no sign of that bridled I dream about.

These terns aren't rare...

Had a look on the Long Nanny Burn, there were plenty of Curlew and 1 very lonely looking Barnacle Goose… Probably a friend of that dodgy bastard Bean Goose that keeps getting reported at Newton Pool, you know the… the one that I never see !

Long Nanny Burn, home to many rares..... errrr.... like a Barnacle Goose

Then back to the tern site…. Another heavy shower was preceded by a small movement of swifts…. Checked them carefully for the crippler with the white rump… but again no joy. 5 minutes later the phone goes…. It’s a good friend and a very reliable birder calling to tell me he’s just had what he was fairly sure was a CHIMNEY SWIFT at Cresswell down the coast… FUGGIN ELL !!!! Spend the next 3 hours grilling the skies for more swifts on the off chance…. The result…. NAFF ALL !!

This IS NOT a Chimney Swift

After chatting to a couple of visitors to take my mind off the swift situation I scan the terns again…. RESULT !!…. Well… OK it’s not the bridled, but it is a nice Roseate…

This tern is a little bit rarer...

I leave the tern hut to go and get a snap of the roseate…it pisses down AGAIN… BOLLOX !! Totally soaked but warmed by the Roseate I head back over the dunes to the car.. sun comes out and I start steaming like a big turd….

Dark Green Fritillary floats by…. Mmmm… Nice end to the day…

FIRST POST !! Long Nanny, June 30th 2007

HELLO !!! Welcome to my new blog…..

I’ve been drifting around Low Newton by the Sea for years, generally seeing naff all most of the time !

So here we go, entry number one….

I spent the morning at Long Nanny tern site doing a bit of voluntary work… good opportunity to try out my new camera with the scope…. So...I proceeded to get 100% baffled by all of the cameras settings, then spent about an hour recovering from the mental strain of it all by seawatching......mmmmm...... before deciding that seawatching was actually crap ! Apart from the millions of pesky auks bobbing about and the odd gannet, all I got was 2 dark arctic skuas and 11 manxies….

Arctic Terns - Long Nanny tern site

On the walk back to the car the dunes were full of flowers…. Why do they all look the same ?? I’m a crap botanist !! Found a few of those pyramidal orchids then struck the jackpot… Bee orchids ! Funky looking flowers that actually look like bees…… errrrr… well kind of…well they probably do if you're on some strange hallucinogenic trip or something ! Anyway.. stunning aren't they !! I whipped out the camera and found that I’d conveniently flattened the battery fiddling about for ages with the terns…. ARSE !! Managed one pic before the camera started freaking out and flashing things at me… oh well…

Bee Orchid - High Newton dunes