Monday 30 January 2012

Black Ice

On Saturday morning I went up to Newbiggin with SH. We checked the lifeboat station first along with GB and RF.
The Black Redstart soon showed itself on a nearby roof. It then spent the next 15 minutes flitting around the lifeboat station before flying off further towards the south bay.
Next we walked up to Beacon Point. No sign of any Snow Buntings but a Short Eared Owl flew around the rough ground in the middle of the golf course.

Leaving Newbiggin we headed south to North Shields Fish Quay. After an hour of waiting an adult Iceland Gull began flying around the harbour as a trawler came in. A few Kittiwakes were also in the harbour.
This morning quite a few Redwing were in the hedgerow near Nelson Farm as I went to the train station and I spotted a Little Egret fishing in a channel near Greatham Creek as the train passed.
I have just seen some reports about a pair of Black Necked Grebes at West Hartford over the weekend! Who found them? BN Grebes are mega rare at WH with only one record from the 80’s. Grebes in general are megas at WH with only a hand full of records none of which I have seen. Nothing about this record makes any sense, BN Grebes are rare in winter in Northumberland anyway especially in pairs and WH was frozen over the weekend and is very shallow anyway. Very Strange.

Below is a picture taken by LMcD of the mystery Duck we saw at Killingworth Lake on Friday, any ideas?

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