Seawatching Weekend

After seeing the movement of little auks on Saturday, I decided to do some seawatching on Sunday morning. I was joined by Alan Jack and Steve Wales for a very good session, this is the totals:

Little Auk - 54
Teal - 100
Common Scoter - 84
Wigeon - 30
Red-Throated Diver - 14
Goldeneye - 3
Shelduck - 4
Long-Tailed Duck - 2
Red-Breasted Merganser - 7
Great Northern Diver - 1

So after that session, I decided to get up early this morning and go seawatching again, this time accompanied by Dan McGibbon. Michael and Joe joined us for the last hour or so, here are our totals for today:

Little Auk - 16
Common Scoter - 110
Red-Throated Diver - 14
Fulmar - 1
Shelduck - 1
Red-Breasted Mergasner - 1
Goldeneye - 3
Peregrine (Chasing starling over the sea) - 1
Great Northern Diver - 2
Long-Tailed Duck - 1
Great-Crested Grebe - 1
Woodcock - 1

Recent Sightings 9/9/12 - 22/9/12

 Baird's Sandpiper and Sanderling at Seaton Snook 9/9/12

 Peregrine at Seaton Snook 9/9/12

 Very Showy Ringed Plover at St. Mary's 22/9/12

 Short-Eared Owls continuing to show well at St. Mary's tonight! 22/9/12

 Snow Bunting at The Brier Dene car park, amazed to find this bird in September! 20/9/12

 St. Mary's Yellow-Browed Warbler showing well on and off this morning.

More St. Mary's Surprises 26/8/12

I decided to get up this morning to go in search of long-tailed skuas, got to the seawatching hide at 7am, but by 8:30am I had seen nothing of note apart from 4 arctic skuas so I decided to check the willows for warblers. On my way in, I spotted a reed warbler and a chiffchaff, a good sign! After seeing little else, I decided to try the stiles, and within 5 minutes of watching, I spotted a little warbler, and after getting it in the binoculars, I noticed a bright yellow supercilium and immediately thought yellow-browed, but on further inspection, it only had 1 wingbar, and just as I went for my camera, it flew off - damn! After searching for another 15 minutes, I heard a high pitched call, Greenish Warbler!! After running around the corner and over the stile,  I was photographing the little beauty! After reporting it and texting a few people, I had Mike Hodgson listening to my recording, and he confirmed my ID. Patch tick number 144, and my rarest yet!  

GREENISH WARBLER

Reed Warbler

Pied Flycatcher last week

Recent Sightings

I haven't been posting for a long while now because I am bunged down with revision and exams! But in between revision sessions, I have been managing to get out so I'm just going to do a post on all recent sightings since my last post (so not really very recent at all!), these are:

Spotted Flycatcher on Holy Island

Marsh Warbler at Hadston Carrs

Gorgeous Little Stint at Newbiggin


I'ev also just returned from St. Mary's after a fantastic seawatching session, 8 manx shearwater past, and 2 adult BLACK TERNS! A brilliant lifer for me!

Third time lucky!

I've managed to dip the long-billed dowitcher at Saltholme twice now, but today I finally nailed it at Greenabella Marsh! Showing for only 15 minutes, this gorgeous bird was another lifer for me, and a very rewarding one at that!

A record shot of the beautiful yank!

St. Mary's Surprises 16/4/12

Arrived at St. Mary's with Dan yesterday morning at 9, seawatching until 11 produced quite a bit, ore than expected, with 5 sandwich terns, 1 common scoter, 2 red-throated divers, a few fulmar and hundreds of common gulls all heading north. Just as we were about to finish, we spotted a summer plumaged, great-northern diver on the sea, a very nice year and patch tick! On our way out, we stopped at the willows just to see what was around, we saw a little bird fly into the trees in front of us, and as it flew out, I noticed an extremely red/orange tail and a very white breast, so we followed it to get an ID, it then showed for another 10 seconds before diving for cover to reveal that it was a NIGHTINGALE! My first in the UK, and a wonderful surprise to the day!

Recent Sightings (Mainly Gulls)

Haven't been able to do many posts recently so I thought I would do a round up of all my recent sightings. I start with my trip to Norfolk, although we didn't get many photos I did get a good number of life ticks. I picked up golden pheasant, shore lark and black brant. We did dip on a few birds such as rough-legged buzzard and hawfinch though. We finished at Titchwell where I took the opportunity to photograph a black-tailed godwit at close range next to the path!

Black-Tailed Godwit

So when we got back home, I noticed a very interesting report on birdguides, it seems a certain fish quay was holding a lot of gulls I was interested in seeing, including kumlien's, glaucous and little gull. I am talking of course about Hartlepool Headland, on arrival we picked up all of these gulls at very close range within ten minutes, and the light was simply wonderful.

Glaucous Gull

Little Gull Kumlien's Gull