Spring Beauties

A stunning Male Brambling in full breeding plumage visited the seed feeder in the garden at Yearle this morning -what a 'cracking' bird! We often have a few Bramblings drop in to the garden during hard weather in the winter, but never one in mid-April. Since mid-March our other early Spring visitors to the feeders are small flocks of  Siskins, including many brightly coloured Males in full breeding plumage.  

Spring ?

Spring ?

It's hard to tell at the moment, we seem to be at that time of year when the weather is on a knife edge.
At Branton Ponds the wild life seems to be also unsure, whilst the trees are full of singing Chiffchaffs and Willow Warblers we had 2 Whooper Swans fly over a few days ago and not unusually there are still one or two Wigeon feeding up on the grassy banks. However the season still battles on, male Tufted Ducks are forming groups and surrounding lone females, Sand Martins are hawking the water along with ever increasing numbers of Swallows and as if to show the spring is moving forwards and has not stalled we had our first Common Sandpipers of the year when 3 turned up on the west pond. Yippee here comes summer!.   

Bewitched by the Dowitcher.....

My first visit to Cresswell in February to see the overwintering Long-billed Dowitcher was rewarded with a typical long-distance view of the bird on the Western shore where it tended to hang out. However in recent days as it gradually changes into its breeding plumage, it is becoming a little bolder and venturing up to the muddy pools north of the Causeway- providing much closer views for birders and photographers to enjoy. How much longer will it stay, until the primeval urge to return to its breeding grounds prompts it to attempt a very precarious return journey?

White winger

White winger

Once again this year Branton Ponds turned up trumps, we were getting ready to go out with the dog when we got a phone call from Alan Hall to say that he and Stevie Rippon had a 1st winter Iceland Gull on Branton Ponds, quick change of plan and we were on site in less than 5 minutes, only to find it had flown off. After checking other local sites we decided it was gone forever, not so, whilst checking Branton later I suddenly saw it sitting on the water, which was astounding as 2 minutes earlier it had not been there. After swimming around for a while it eventually took off and headed to the east , hopefully in the next few days it may return.

Geese

Geese

We decided to have a morning at the coast and so with that in mind headed off to Stag Rocks which was very quiet only birds of note being 6 Common Scoter along with several Common Eider, there was no sign of the Black Scoter reported earlier in the week. Our next destination was Harpers Heugh which proved to be the most productive of the day, in the field next to the road were a number of geese which were mainly made up of Greylags(60) and Pink-feet(110). On searching carefully through the flock we were pleased to find a single Tundra Bean Goose(rossicus) hiding amongst the Pink-feet, further scanning produced 3 White-fronted Geese of the Greenland race(flavirostis) along with 3 Pale-bellied Brent Geese and 18 Barnacle Geese, not a bad selection for such a small flock. Our final destination was Fenham le Moor where we encountered a dozen more Brents plus Redshanks, Knot, Turnstones and a respectable flock of some 30 Pintails.

A Bounty of Barn Owls!

A trip to Chatton from Lowick on Saturday night rewarded with one Barn Owl at our road end(Lowick);one near Holburn and another near Hetton!
Our return journey caught a full face view of another fine bird sitting on top of a hedge near Chatton!
A daytime trip to Twizel last week rewarded us with the lovely sight of a Barn Owl flying through the ruins of Twizel Castle and out into a nearby tree where it perched for five or so minutes despite some harrying by Jackdaws and Rooks!

Seasons

Early morning around Branton Ponds had a feel of winter, the ponds themselves were 80% frozen. This helped to concentrate the birds onto the small areas of open water, Wigeon are still in good sized numbers along with Teal, Tufted Duck, Mallard and 2 Pochard. Siskins ,Bullfinch, Lesser Redpoll and various members of the Tit family fed greedily amongst the Alders. In stark contrast when the sun came out and the air warmed up a bit we came across our first Adder of the year, a small male which was our earliest ever by 2 days, could spring be just around the corner?