Norwegian garden warbler....

Back in Sept 2008 I caught a garden warbler with a Norwegian ring on. Today I got this information through from the BTO.....

Norwegian ringed garden warbler...

This bird came from HERE.

This bird travelled 577km south west over the North Sea in 3 days.... Obviously on a mission !!

Mystery bird...

Here's the next one......

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Mystery bird answer...

Here's the answer to the last mystery bird....... "eastern" chiffchaff. Well done Stephen and Kay, both correct.....

This bird displayed all of the classic visual features associated with tristis, however it didn't call which is the clincher. Therefore its down as an "eastern" chiff......

"Eastern" chiffchaff, Low Newton Nov 2008

Long Nanny & Low Newton, 26th July 2009

The missus had got her face on today, so I decided to bail out this afternoon and leave her alone with her mood....... Off to Newton I went....

First off I headed up to the Nanny, on the saltmarsh here there was 167 curlew, 4 whimbrel, 10 golden plover and 4 juv wheatears. On the muddy edges of the burn 1 common sand and handful of noisy redshank were feeding....

Around at the tern site the large post breeding gathering of terns on the shore included 3 adult roseates and 2 common terns.

Couple of rosys....

Late afternoon I decided to brave Low Newton..... visiting the village on a Sunday ? I must be bleedin mental !!

As I suspected the beach was full of noisy holiday makers and lots of dogs crapping everywhere... FANTASTIC !!...... A quick look at the emblestones produced 3 roseate terns (2 adults and a juv) despite this annoying nobhead flying about on his giant kite in front of me and the terns....

Nobhead with a big kite in front of the emblestones......

"Oi !! I'm watching roseates, get out of the feckin way you prat !!"

It didn't take long for me to get proper annoyed with all the people, if it wasn't captain nobhead with his silly kite, it was some stupid dogwalker letting his dripping wet mutt jump all over me...... ARRGGGGHHHH !!

Enough was enough so I headed round to the pool........ well I say pool, I really mean LAKE. The situation here is pretty desperate now, all I saw was 2 mallard and a little grebe.... All the other ducks have given up and gone, and even the swans were absent ? They've probably drowned in all that deep water...... In fact I don't know why someone doesn't just put concrete banks around it and we'll call it Newton Reservoir..... At least we might get a chance of seeing a common sandpiper on it then !!

With all hope for a decent autumn wader on the pool lost I went to check out the flood instead, this was pretty depressing too.... why isn't there more water here when the pool is so full ?

On the flood today there was nothing at all, probably because its still the size of a small inflatable paddling pool....... No waders, but the pied wags here included 2 scruffy looking juv yellow wags.

Roll on the autumn.....

Newton Point, Low Newton & Long Nanny, 25th July 2009

The weather forecast was for a pleasant day today and that means crowds of annoying people at Newton..... being the grumpy old sod that I am, I opted for an early morning start to avoid the plebs....

Newton Point at 6am....

A 1 hour seawatch between 6am and 7am produced:

1 arctic skua
1 bonxie
11 manxies
2 roseate terns
2 whimbrel
3 dunlin
13 turnstone
1 red-breasted merganser

On the shore here there was a 1 juv yellow wagtail and 1 grey wagtail amongst the pieds. A cracking male merlin was perched on the rocks at the point, but unfortunately he spotted me at just as I spotted him and he made a sharp exit flushing everything in the process !

Spot the bonxie...

By 7.15am I was watching the waders on the shore at Low Newton, quite a selection here including 4 whimbrel, 3 dunlin and plenty of redshank and turnstone....

Whimbrel & curlew

Juv kitt roosting with the blackheads at Low Newton

And now for some good news !! On the shore at Low Newton I counted 10 newly fledged little terns !! News from the Long Nanny tern site is that 22 little terns fledged this year, a good total I reckon.....

Juv little tern

Adult little tern

I was enjoying watching the little terns when I heard a roseate call, I turned around to see 5 roseates (3 ads and 2 juvs) flying over my head and then landing on the beach, I got my camera out to get some photographs but the first plebs of the day beat me to it......

No sooner had I got my camera out than these 2 muppets walked straight past me into the terns and flushed the lot ! They could see I was watching the birds but they still ploughed ahead... WTF !!..... I FECKIN HATE ALL THESE IDIOTS !!

FECKIN PLEBS !!

The roseates eventually settled with other terns out on the emblestones.....

I decided to check out the pool, shouldn't have bothered really, its more like Newton LAKE !! Nightmare !! No mud, no waders, no dabbling ducks..... all that rain we had last weekend has wrecked it, don't think there's much chance of that spotted crake now...... still the swans seem happy, and the 7 or 8 mallards that are still here.....

Newton Lake

So, the pool is now a lake, but maybe all that rain will have helped the flood at Low Newton develop again........ erm....... nope...... its still a puddle !! ARSE !!

Its only a puddle but it had 19 curlew paddling in it !

By 9am there were way to many people about for my liking so I decided to abandon Low Newton and head up to the Nanny....

At the south end of Beadnell Bay 3 adult roseate terns were fishing. Then down at the Nanny there was 4 common sands, 11 dunlin, 1 greenshank and plenty of redshank on the muddy margins. A scan of the gulls roosting on the saltmarsh produced this lurker..

Lurker

Adult med, top bird !!

Along the fenclines at the saltmarsh there were 3 spotty juv wheatears and 1 juv whinchat...

Wheatear juv

Whinchat juv

Around at the tern site the season is drawing to a close, most young have fledged and the gathering of over 1200 terns on the shore here is a very impressive sight indeed ! I gave these , and the gulls nearby, a thorough scan but all I could produce was 3 common terns and a few sandwich...

On returning to the car I could not get over how many people had arrived, the car park was too full, overflowing in fact...... people everywhere.........where the hell do they all come from ?!!!....... ARGHHHHH !!..... GET ME OUT OF HERE !!!

Big dipper.....

Not sure you can really call it a dip, but we knew we were on the road to a hiding before we had even started......

The final score....

Blue-cheeked Bee-eater 1 - Northumberland Mentalists 0

The winner...

The losers, sitting in a service station halfway to Kent somewhere, having just paid £3 each for a cup of coffee !! £3 FFS !!!

We never even made it as far as Kent, after 2 hours of "no further sign of...." messages we decided it was pointless hammering on south, and parked up in a service station.... We had about 1 hour to play with, after that, even if it was relocated, the chances of making it down there before dark would be very slim indeed.....

We killed an hour (and nearly ourselves) by eating some of the most disgusting junk food I've ever encountered, and decided to wash this down with the most expensive coffee ever encountered too...... Oh yes, a marvellous afternoon was had by all at the Welcome Break !!

TC enjoying a balanced and nutritious meal from Burger King..... Mmmmmm......

After an hour thoroughly enjoying the delights of Welcome Break, we decided it was time to leave..... and one last "no further sign of..." message sealed the deal.......

WHAT THE HELL WERE WE THINKING OF ?!!..... ATTEMPTING TO TWITCH A BEE-EATER IN KENT.......... FROM NORTHUMBERLAND ??!!!

WE MUST BE TOTALLY BLEEDIN MENTAL !!

Low Newton & Newton Pool, 17th July 2009

ITS PROPER PISSING DOWN OUT THERE !!

Last night and this morning its just been non stop torrential rain....... Newton Pool is rapidly turning into a duck pond again, the far muddy margins have almost gone and the mud in front of the hide is reduced....

The other side of the coin is that the seasonal flood at Low Newton, which has been bone dry all summer, now has a puddle in it....... and instantly it has been colonised by not 1, not 2, but 18 oystercatchers, all splodgin about in the middle of it !!

Anyway..... At the pool the largest expanse of mud is now right in front of the hide.... This morning it held 3 common sandpipers and a nice little gull....

Nice....

A nice fresh juv common sand...

Due to the horrible weather and my "lightweight" "fair weather" birding tendencies I didn't go anywhere else this morning apart from having a quick look in Newton Haven, here some roosting kitts and terns on the emblestones included 2 roseate terns again....

I am away this weekend so something good is bound to show up on the pools muddy margins..... Just so long as its not a total crippler.... need to save that sharp-tailed sand for next week !!

Mystery bird...

Here's the solution to the last mystery bird..... it was a marsh sandpiper. Well done Stewart and Warren you were about as close as you can get !

Marsh sandpiper

Here's another.....

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Newton Pool & Low Newton, 15th July 2009

I had a quick visit to Newton late afternoon...... down to the hide to see how the wader situation was developing........ It wasn't !!

Zero waders and no change on the dabbling duck front either.... A distant water rail was grubbing about on the mud on the far side of the pool, but that was about it....

On leaving the hide I decided to check the beach at Low Newton for waders......It held....

3 whimbrel
1 dunlin
and a handful of curlew and redshank

It also held a flock of terns and gulls that included 2 roseate terns.....

Mmmmmm.......... Rosy !

Quail at High Buston....

Today I was out on High Buston Farm just south of Alnmouth, and heard a quail singing HERE.

Its in winter wheat and was singing at about 10.45, and again when I revisited the spot at 1.30.

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....

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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

Newton Pool, 1st July 2009

I had a day off work today and managed an hour at Newton Pool this afternoon.

The pool is now looking very good indeed, lots of mud and a nice shoreline in front of the hide...... The mud was waderless but I managed a flyover greenshank and 2 curlews....

I sat in the hide for about an hour hoping for something to drop in....... it didn't !

It was still well worth sitting there tho, I had 3 water rail encounters, all very brief, an adult and a scruffy juv both legging it around the mud.....

Good close views but as they were so brief I only managed to grab 2 photographs, 1 was a blur, luckily this one wasn't as bad...

Water rail leggin it !

The mud was unfortunately waderless, but dabbling duck numbers are rising, now 3 gadwall and 9 teal amongst the many mallards..... oh, and a family of those honkin greylags have appeared too.....

Teal

Hope there will be some waders here soon.....

Mystery bird...

I've been skimming through my pictures and have found some particularly rubbish shots that I thought I'd post up just for fun..... some may be straightforward others maybe virtually impossible !!

Here's one to kick off with....

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