I blame Gary for this...

I found myself lying in the South Bay at St. Mary's yesterday afternoon studying every single pipit on the beach, after regularly reading about Gary's pipits at Newton. Fascinating stuff, and as Paul M said, "nothing like a bit of 'littoralis' action in Mid-March!". I managed to get 2 'littoralis' Rock Pipits, 3 Rock Pipits and a Meadow Pipit on the seaweed all at 10ft range. Here are some photos:

 One of Two 'Scandinavian' Rock Pipits. Note the overall light (peachy) colouring, strong supercilium and much whiter outer tail feathers.

 A nice 'normal' Rock Pipit!

Smart Meadow Pipit showing as well.

A lifer weekend

My weekend started on Friday at Tynemouth with the great grey shrike very fleetingly. It was on the priory for a couple of seconds then flew off and I didn't see it again. The goldcrests and other warblers were putting in a performance as well but nothing unusual.

On Saturday, we went to Hartlepool to see the woodchat shrike which was a new bird for me. A very handsome and approachable bird along with a lot of other things: redwings, goldcrests and a lot of other birds. Unfortunately I didn't get any birding in on Sunday because I was ringing all day which was also a success. 2 GS Woodpeckers, Redwings, Stonechat and a pied flycatcher were all ringed. There was a lot of other good birds ringed too. See the photos for details.

And yesterday, I was at St. Mary's getting my second lifer of the weekend, the red-flanked bluetail which was showing very well on the fence posts and stiles. There was plenty of other things too, goldcrest, redstart and a garden warbler which is a patch tick. I think it is a garden warbler but I have aphoto of it on this blog so feel free to tell me if it's not.

Overall, I think that is a pretty impressive weekend, shame about the light though.

Woodchat Shrike Garden WarblerRed-Flanked Bluetail

Redwing Meadow PipitGS Woodpecker Stonechat SiskinWillow Tit