WWT Washington

Had a trek down to WWT Washington to see the young avocets and had a brilliant day.

Bumped into a pal of mine too which is always nice.

Here's a few of my pics.

not having been out much recently mostly due to lack of time but I have made the effort this week and managed a couple of pics of the ducklings on the river Blyth in total these birds have 23 young!

I also stumbled across a family of young Blue tits on the bates pit ponds

and i'll finish off todays short post with this nice chiffchaff (I think?) with a beak full of food.

Ingram Adders

Called into Ingram valley yesterday with my wife and young son for a wander about and stumbled (literally) across four adders, nearly stepped onto two of the buggers!

Luckily I spotted the two when I had James with me so headed back to car and left him with my wife safely out of their area, then I headed off into the hillside with the camera this is when I realised that there were actually four in a very small area probably about 4m x 4m. It was a rocky area underneath a small tree and I felt very uneasy with all those snakes around me as they kept appearing from under my feet and I only had trainers on not my usual walking boots which made the risk of a bite more dangerous as trainers would've provided no protection to me at all.

Keith Reeder suggested I should have tried to move the grass away from its eyes before taking this image! :-)

I think not! 

After spending a few minutes with the snakes I decided to move on as I really didn't feel comfortable with them all around me. I headed back into the valley and drove onto the visitor center where I spoke to the wardens and let them know where the adders were. Apparently there are alot of them this year and he suggested that three of them were probably large females and one definately a male (something to do with the amount of brown colour on the skin sexes them.).

This one above is the same one as in the first image. It was the best behaved of the four but it appears BLIND on all the pics i've got of it, there are no eyes just indentations where the eyes should be.

I've included this image just to show how difficult it can be to find an adder in the wild, Please take extra care when in the great outdoors wear walking boots to provide extra protection against an attack even experienced walkers like myself do occasionally get too close to adders. I nearly got bit last year when out with Keith in the Cheviots I lent over a stone wall to take a picture of some flowers (without checking it first.) and an adder was basking on the top of the wall! That could've been a very costly error and its one I wont repeat in a hurry!

On the birding front the area was rather quiet but I did see whinchat, buzzard, grey heron, BHG, robins, thrush, spuggies and the usual tits and finch around the visitor center area. One cuckoo was calling higher up the valley but I couldn't see it.

Meadow Pipit flight shots

Called into Holy Island for lunch today and managed a couple of nice flight shots of what I think is a meadow pipit

This one below was taken yesterday in Ingram valley not sure what it is as I only managed to see its back!

May 2010

Its been a while since i've been out and about but i've managed a few minutes with the camera this week so here's some of what i've been capturing.

Hope you like them?

Catching up on what i've been up to..................

Haven't had much to post recently with all the poor weather but Blyth seems to be alive with these little fellows just now Chiffchaffs are calling all over the place!

There's also a few Dunnock around too along with several nice sized flocks of Bullfinch in some parts of Blyth

My garden birds are starting to settle into the boxes now with bluetits and blackbirds both setting up home in the back

Along with all this going on I managed a trip to Druridge today to see if I could find the Great white egret, I did but it was a long way off.

 

still it was great to see it especially when in flight - what a gracefull flyer. The pools also had several shovelers and a lovely toad.

Washington Wetlands Avocet is back!

Yesterday I said "Next first of the year I hope to be a grasshopper warbler. "

I was wrong - today we headed off down to Washington wetlands for a day out with my son and wife. The weather was funny with bright sun at times and very overcast other times. The wetlands were as usual quiet but we enjoy it that way. After a brief look in the new hide at Hawthorn woods we headed off down to wader lake to see if we could spot the latest arrival and there it was feeding on the far bank.

Having watched it for a few minutes something came over the lake lifting nearly every bird on the water including the avocet which shot off in completely the wrong direction for photographs! 

Other highlights from today were the moorhens which are very aggresive just now, kept me entertained for ages.

and this cute little duck (i've no idea what kind it is.).

the only other interesting bird I had today was another waxwing in my garden which I managed to grab a pic of too