Newton Point, 20th July 2008

OH MY GOD !! I'VE GONE SOFT IN THE HEAD !!

Meet Finbar...

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have a few... ahem..... "opinions".... about dogs..... well often it's not so much dogs as some selfish dog owners behaviour....

When my girlfriend asked if her much loved little white fluffy thing could come and stay, you can imagine my response ! After a bit of gentle nagging.... errr.... I mean "persuasion", I rather reluctantly agreed to dog sit for 3 weeks while her parents were away on holiday..... The condition was that I would not be responsible for walks or cleaning up shit etc.....

So Finbar arrived.... I kept him at arms length to start with, I'm not very keen on dogs, especially not little girly fluffballs... but this little fella has got a big character ! Before I knew what was happening I found myself running around the beach with him and chucking sticks about !! How embarrassing, not very macho....but I couldn't help it !

We are now firm friends and he follows me everywhere ! He even helps me on seawatches.....

".......sooty shearwater 10 o'clock "

The weather looked reasonable for some seabirds today, so finbar and I did 1.5 hours seawatch this evening...

An amazing count of 7 adult roseate terns flying north was the highlight. I actually counted a possible 10 roseates, but this count involved 2 groups of 3 birds and I wasn't sure that they weren't the same ones feeding in the area and looping around ?

1.5 hour total...

7 roseate terns
1 sooty shearwater (close inshore, almost over the rocks !)
24 manx shearwaters
3 arctic skuas
1 bonxie
5 velvet scoter
4 red-breasted merganser
5 whimbrel

Whimbrel at Newton Point....

On the walk back to the car there was a spotty juv wheatear, 7 redshank and stunning sum plum turnstone on the rocks.....

Mmmmm.... BIKES !!

Had a swift blast up to Heartside Cafe this morning with a few other bikes, chucking it round those bends gives instant grin factor, love those twisty roads !!

Bikes.....

The very latest state of the art sportsbike..... cost an absolute fortune, defo a posers bike....

......or.....maybe I'm just a bit jealous !!

R1 - my next bike.... maybe....

RR with funky paint...

Blade.... what a classic, I used dream of owning this bike when I was young....

R1 & brand new blade..... stupid fast.....

Mmmmm......Custard !!

Lovely R6...... oh yeah....that's mine actually !!

Long Nanny, Newton Pool and Newton Point, 19th July 2008

MIGRANTS !!.......On the very soggy walk down to the Nanny today I had a wheatear and 2 whinchats !!

Juv wheatear

Juv whinchat

I wonder where these juvenile birds have come from, I imagine they must be fairly local ?

On the Nanny today were 121 curlew, 1 redshank and 2 common sandpipers.... oh.... and a flock of those orrible honkin greylags...

Around at the tern site there were the usual terns, plus 3 common terns, 6 sandwich terns, 1 dunlin and 6 sanderling.... Of interest was a common tern with a nearly all red bill...

Common tern

Some arty bollox... I like droplets of rain and all that...

Down at Newton Pool there was nuffin new really..... in front of the hide a very distinctive looking juv chiffchaff caught my eye...... whitish underparts, greyish head and fresh bright olive/green wings... looked a bit like a bonelli's !!

Errrr........ well........ actually it looked nothing like a bonelli's !!..... but you know what I mean..... well maybe you don't..... it looked a lot like a juvenile chiff......they're rather funky tho aren't they......

Mmmmm..... I'm talking cobblers again.......

Anyway........

A bit of blue....

Tufty...

Along the shore towards Newton Point there were a number of terns including a very nice adult roseate..... on the shore there was a common sand, a redshank and a large group of oycs....

At Newton Point a cracking sum plum barwit flew north with a whimbrel..... In the words of Jazz Club.... "Nice".......

Newton Pool, Newton Point & Long Nanny, 13th July 2008

THIS BLOKE IS A BELLEND !!

Lawnmower powered dimwit...

Now if someone wants to risk their life buzzing round the skies in contraption that looks like a small tent that's just blown away then who am I to complain......

But.... I just get the right hump with the people who drone up and down really low over the breeding terns at the Long Nanny.... the reason I get pissed off is because every year the National Trust speak to the local club, explain the sensitive nature of the site and ask that they steer clear.... but these selfish fukwits just ignore that... and the terns always go bezerk, just another disturbance to a site that's already under pressure....

This is schedule 1 disturbance and I'm all for a zero tolerance approach to this kind of unnecessary disturbance, I think the police should be informed when they do this..... and that goes for those bleedin nobheads on jetskis too ! Yep, we should send the rozzers round to give em a proper kickin..... ahem...... I mean "talking to".

Did a quick spin round the patch today starting at High Newton to check out the progress of the wildbird cover....

Looking good.... Got a few spuds in there too !!

At High Newton I was chuffed to see the tree sparrows have fledged...

Tree sprog...

Down at the pool there were 12 teal which are new arrivals... no sign of the otter here tho, it was seen again on Friday apparently.... all the other usual breeding stuff here...

Next I headed to Newton Point, a 1 hour seawatch produced 3 arctic skuas, 1 bonxie and 5 manxies. Also 6 whimbrel flew south calling....

Swallow juvs at Newton Point compound...

Also at the compound.....stonkin male linnet !

In the afternoon I decided to head to the Long Nanny....

In the dunes.....

Pyamidal orchid

A ropey lookin bee orchid...

Dark green fritt...

Along the edge of the Long Nanny were 2 common sands, 2 dunlin and 19 curlew, and a yellow wagtail flew south calling.

Curlew

At the tern site activity was dying down after a spate of bad weather and predation, there are now only 2 little tern chicks remaining and a few big fat arctics, many of which are now fledged...

Fledged !!

Tern Warden Andrew with one of his terns..

Amongst the usual arctic and little terns on the shore here were 19 sandwich terns and 9 common terns. The wardens told me that up to three roseates have been showing up daily for the last week too....

Still feeding...

High Newton & Newton Point, 5th July 2008

WHAT A TOTAL PLANK !!.......................I am.........

Did something dumb last night......

I decided to have a go at storm petrel ringing at Newton Point, I arrived at 11.00pm and set up a 60ft net on the shore... it was still light so I took it easy and fannied about sorting out my ringing stuff for a bit.... then the time came to put the storm petrel tape on...... this year I decided to take my soundsystem system to give some serious volume (last year I just used a loud ghetto blaster)...

I got the net set up, the soundsystem and speakers were in place, got the car battery out and then realised that the inverter had one plug on it... fine for the old ghetto blaster but I had to run a CD player and an amp...... with two plugs !! BOLLOX !!

I couldn't get an extension lead from anywhere at midnight, so I packed it all away again (swearing all the way !).....and ended up kipping on the shore in my sleeping bag instead....

Then I got a shit nights sleep because the tide came in at around 2.30 and nearly washed me away !!.... MARVELOUS !!

So I had another early morning ringing sesh....

A favourite.... what a stunner.....

Female linnet

Male linnet

Also some good birds showing at the ringing site today, 2 crossbills still around, adult and juv yellow wagtail, barn owl showing really well all morning, it kept landing next to the net !..... and then a long eared owl was flying around the site, narrowly avoiding the net on one occasion too..... finally 2 greenshanks flew south late in the morning....

After hardly any sleep and a mornings ringing I decided to be lazy and sit at Newton Point for a bit of a seawatch.... 3 whimbrel were amongst curlews on the rocks here, I only managed half an hour here before the rain came in tho..... just 7 manxies and two groups of common scoter (110 in total) flying north...

Whimbrel....