All Over The Place (Plus 1 Life Tick)

We have been all around Northumberland today looking for birds. We started very locally at St. Mary’s to see if we could find the firecrest. After looking around for 30 mins we decided to give up and start on the waders. The North Bay produced 3 oystercatchers, 3 dunlin, 2 turnstone, 1 curlew, 17 redshank and a bar-tailed godwit (now in its 3rd week at St. Mary’s). Just as we started to leave, a peregrine flew over getting all the waders to fly. It soon landed somewhere near Seaton Sluice and not quite out of view. We left after that. However, on our way out, we saw a short-eared owl fly over the south bay sending all the gulls up. Not bad so far!! Then we went to Holywell for the guided tour. We went to the members hide first which didn’t give us anything until a report came in about a pectoral sandpiper at the public hide so we all left and went there. Just before we got there, Bob Dack (a friend of Holywell Pond) came out and gave the dreadful words of ‘it’s just flown that way’. We couldn’t believe it, just our luck but we went in the hide and waited. We saw 5 snipe, loads of geese and gulls, 50+ lapwing and eventually after 40 minutes, a pectoral sandpiper! Hooray!! We then went to Druridge Pools to finish the day with a glossy ibis. When we arrived in the Oddie Hide, everybody was around the windows to the right of the hide. The Ibis was there feeding. We watched that for a while before a heron flew in landed very close to the hide. It produced brilliant views without chasing the ibis! There was an amazing amount of shoveler at Druridge today but only females. Just as we were leaving, a greenshank flew over and landed on the mud. A very successful day! 164 – Pectoral Sandpiper (another life tick!) Pectoral Sandpiper Grey Heron

Glossy Ibis Greenshank

Shoveler