July 2005...

...was a very good month for terns, with trips to Cemlyn Bay (Anglesey) for the sooty tern, Leighton Moss (Lancashire) for caspian tern, and more locally, Whitley Bay (Northumberland) for roseate tern and black tern. If I remember correct, Norfolk had lesser crested tern in July 2005 too! All photographs presented here were taken with the trusty Canon 10D ~ wouldn't mind another pop at a UK sooty with the 1D...

Sooty Tern - great bird seen on a very hot July afternoon - heat haze was a real problem! Twitched with Tom, who had dipped the previous day!

Caspian Tern - seen one week after the Cemlyn sooty... twitched after an overtime shift at work, so arrived in the afternoon when the light was unfavourable. Pre-Mull Bryan was there too!

Adult Roseate Tern - St Mary's (Whitley Bay) enjoyed a few years of good mid summer roseate tern gatherings, numbers have since dropped off.

Fluke photo of immature black tern and immature roseate tern.

Doolittle Birding

Friday afternoon, another week of work over... excellent!

Thursday was bright and sunny - so a trip to East Chevington was called for during the afternoon. On the north pool a single roseate tern roosted amongst the common, arctic and sandwich tern and four 1s little gull were pottering about. Water levels continue to drop, so hopefully late July will attract plenty of waders.

At Hauxley the main bird species of interest was the appearance of two drake scaup ... otherwise it was fairly quiet (albeit noisy with all the juv BHGs' and grey-lags!). A few wigeon have returned and most of the grey heron were in odd sun-bathing poses!

Hopefully the weekend will provide opportunity to get out and about... possibly even take a photograph or two?

Highlight for me so far today is the purchase of tickets to see the Pixies at Brixton in October. Loved this band first time round, but only saw them once (Preston 1990)... so could not resist this opportunity to see them again, especially as they'll be performing the whole of the Doolittle album for it's 20th anniversary!

Here's a clip (co-incidentally from Brixton, 1991, Black Francis is somewhat thinner here than today...) - check out the crowd after about 33 seconds!

and... they've sold out... nice!

East Chevington

A potter up the coast on Monday 22nd was relativley quiet, albeit for East Chevington, where the north pool is finally exposing some mud. 21 1st summer little gull dominated the proceedings, with a single adult roseate tern among the sandwich, common and arctic tern resting below the south hide. Nine grey heron patrolled the south pool, while offshore a large raft of common scoter were beyond the burn mouth and small parties of puffin steamed to and from Coquet Island.