Thug Life

Impressive immature Glaucous Gull at North Shields on 13th March ...

(Click images for better viewing).

Resuming

All of a sudden, 2018 ends and the first month of 2019 is almost over... some highlights and some images...

Snow Bunting, St Mary's Promenade December 2018. A chance to try an alternative camera body - 5D mark IV. Full frame, so some magnification lost ... but pleasing detail. 

Little Owl

Black Redstart

Glaucous Gull, Norfolk

January was busy with a good variety of species picked up in Northumberland... highlights including Firecrest, four species of Owl, Smew, Marsh Tit, Black Redstart, Snow Bunting, Chiffchaff and local Little Egrets. The final weekend was spent in Norfolk - a great place to boost the earliest and an abundance of good quality species. Highlights included Bewick's swan, Red-necked Grebe, Cattle/Great Egret, 11 species of BOP (inc Owl sp number 5, Hen Harrier, Rough-legged Buzzard), Water Pipits, Dartford Warbler, Brambling, Hawfinch and Arctic Redpoll

Rough-legged Buzzard... distant...

Afterwork...

Cormorant takes a bite! 

Up the coast...

Potter up the coast produced a few useful year-tick fodder... with Brambling, Tundra Bean Geese, European White-fronted Geese, Hen Harrier, Glaucous Gull being the highlights.

Nice weather to boot.

Not much in the way of photographs today.

Hunting...

Late afternoon Glaucous Gull (iPhone)

The start of the end

Pleasant couple of hours at Tynemouth this morning, with a Black Redstart favouring the cliffs adjacent the pier, and an immature Glaucous Gull in the vicinity.

Should have taken the 500mm... all images with the 100-400mm

Out of the shadows...

Decent

Potter this morning resulted in a decent melody of species - great grey shrike continues along with little egret near to home, while at North  Shields a gull fest with 2 glaucous (1st year birds) a "Viking" glaucous x herring hybrid and a 2c Iceland Gull. Iphone at the ready for some images..,

Top 2 - Gaucous Gull

Middle - left "Viking", right Glaucous, Viking and GBBG.

Lower - 2c Iceland Gull

Bitter

Bitterly cold start to the weekend... the brute of a Glaucous Gull must feel at home at North Shields. No Iceland counterpart during a brief exposure to the cold this morning.

A gull inside the mouth

Headed down to Tynemouth / North Shields on the bike this morning - third trip to the area in the past few weeks in hope for a white winger.

Success came in the form of the immature Glaucous, pointed out on the middens. A good result for the bike list. A hundred or so pink footed geese flew over too.

The return journey resulted in the feral barnacle goose on the boating lake, the whooper swan and 3 great crested grebe at Killingworth lake, two goosander on Arcot, and a winter high of three short-eared owl at West Hartford.

The BIG dipper

A very overcast morning saw Mark and I head to North Shields Fish Quay - both glaucous and iceland gull had been reported a day previous.

We parked up opposite the boat sheds and ended up walking round to the Black Middens - with no sign of either gull and very wet conditions we opted for a pit stop back at the quay for coffee and a panini (we're so sophisticated).

Meanwhile STH had arrived - so a quick text from the warmth of the cafe to Steve to inform of our presence was rewarded with a call back informing that the glaucous had re-appeared. Result.

The monster gull spent most of its time up on the shed roofs, but luckily it took a fish scrap and flew past, giving one ok photo from a flyby sequence...

High-fives all round, we then headed back to Cramlington - a journey that was intercepted by Gordon with news that he had re-located the dipper on the Horton Burn. Tensions rose as we promptly headed to the burn!

Thankfully the dipper was still present - and hopefully will remain available over then next few days for a 2013 tick. This dipper is the first to be really available within urban Cramlington - birds on the River Blyth are really at the periphery of Cramlington acceptability!

A single kingfisher patrolled the burn while we grilled the dipper, and to complete the set, a grey wagtail flew over the house while I de-booted on the driveway.

Not a bad morning - perhaps more exciting for me than anyone who cares to waste there time reading this drivel!

Blyth White Wings

It was another bright winter afternoon so I headed down to Blyth South Harbour where two iceland gull have recently been frequenting. Initial scanning of the harbour did not produce much, only a few herring, great black back and black-headed gull, long with a single red-breasted merganser and up to twenty eider. Feeling a bit despondent I started to work my way back from the harbour master building and quickly picked up an apparent immature iceland gull in flight - great! Moving closer to the area where the bird was I was surprised to find BB... photographing it on the water (initial reaction was that this was a glauc, bill was very two-tone... see Northumbrian birding blog to see why its' an iceland, a great advert for digital photography in use while birding) Not much later a second bird arrive, both lingered, allowing several photographs to be taken, although the light soon became tricky as the sun began to set. One bird was distinctly browner toned than the other, I expect this is down to individual wear, tear and bleaching through the birds life-cycle.

4birders

Ventured south to Teesside this morning as a re-united quartet, birding alongside Mark, cousin Rob and John B. Both Rob and John B no longer live in the north-east, so it's rare that we can all meet up for a spot of birding. Given the recent GWG, Teesside seemed a good spot to be. Alas, no sign of the GWG, but we did manage a nice selection with peregrine, short-eared owl and little egret at Saltholme, an immature/first winter glaucous gull at Cowpen Bewley, second winter mediterranean gull, adult yellow-legged gull and 6 waxwing at the Tees Barrage.

Chips with curry sauce at Hartlepool were smashing too!