Tick and run for 249

I hate the tick and run culture of birding, but sometimes, needs must!

News broke this morning of a cattle egret amongst the ponies on the Budge fields at Druridge which had allegedly been found by Dave Elliott. Janet and I were in Alnwick meeting friends over coffee in Barter books when I heard about it but as soon as we could, we headed south. It was mistake to take the A1 as the bank holiday traffic had already slowed to a stop at Felton, frustration grew but we eventually made it to the patch. The egret had moved onto the field north of the pool amongst the cattle (who would've thought?) and was viewed at a distance from the turning circle. The views were satisfactory though and the bird showed well and the sunshine made the orangey colours (of the bird coming into breeding plumage) on the crown and back stand out well. Not prepared for birding, I had no cameras on me so there's no pics...

Family commitments meant I couldn't hang about, but a great bird to catch up with on the patch, if not totally unexpected. Cattle egret takes my patch list to 249 and the overall patch list to 269.

I tried a seawatch yesterday evening from 16:45 for an hour. It was quite with a couple of manx shearwaters going north, eight sandwich terns, a couple of whimbrel and nine common scoter of note.

On (or over) the Budge fields I noted all three common hirrundines and my first swifts of the year, with about half-a-dozen over the pools on the fields. Four species of raptor were also noted - kestrel (remarkably my first on the patch this year), sparrowhawk (big female over the pools), buzzard and marsh harrier - a female hunting on the Budge fields.

This rather fine lapwing caught the light outside the little hide.

Five years ago

Having twitched cattle egret at the weekend, a look through old blog posts from January 2008 made stumbling on this quite bizarre

http://ipinswildlifeblog.blogspot.co.uk/2008/01/just-dreaming.html

Maybe, just maybe my dream of 2008 might come true and the cattle egret may no longer find Holy Island to its liking and head south.....

For Gary Stinger I also produced an image of a cattle egret on Beadnell harbour in 2008

Twitch before patch

A twitch took priority over my patch this morning, as I headed north, with what seemed like most of the other birders in the County to Holy Island, to see Northumberland's second ever (and first twitchable) cattle egret.

The bird had roosted in the garden of the bungalow on the Crooked Lonnen overnight and was still in the garden, barely visible, when we arrived. It vacated the garden and flew around for a while, before landing in the adjacent field giving the assembled twitchers good views.

Sizeable twitch (Tom Cadwallenders luminous green hat could be spotted from the mainland!)

As regular readers of the blog will know, I am a reluctant twitcher and rarely travel beyond the County line and I have to admit today's experience isn't high on my list of memorable birding experiences. It was good to catch up with a few folk I've not seen for a while. The addition of cattle egret took my Northumberland list to 306, it was also a British tick for me, but I haven't a clue what that list stands at.

After a quick brew and bacon buttie at home, I was down on the patch. First job was my overdue WeBS count, which took a while as there was lot of birds on the Budge fields, not helped by them being flight for some reason.

Teal numbered 139, wigeon 127, shoveler 9, greylag 112, dunlin 22 and gadwall 10. On the big pool, the long-tailed duck reported yesterday was still present - a good patch bird indeed! This is my first patch 'oldsquaw' since 2007.

Oldsquaw - drake long tailed duck on the big pool

It may be because I have been in Thailand for three weeks, but the strong SW wind made it freezing cold, I retreated to the shelter of the dunes for a quick look at the sea. There wasn't much on it, one red-throated diver and some gulls, I picked up a great northern diver flying north, close in, and a flock of about 60 curlew with a single bar-tailed godwit amongst them.

So today's efforts saw my patch list reach 48 species (52 points in the patch competition). This could well be my last visit of January unless I can sneak in a quick dawn-raid before work.

24 teal
25 coot
26 gadwall
27 wigeon
28 shoveler
29 mallard
30 greylag goose
31 canada goose
32 stock dove
33 dunlin
34 redshank
35 pheasant
36 goldeneye
37 long-tailed duck
38 tufted duck
39 sanderling
40 red-throated diver
41 great-northern diver
42 herring gull
43 great black-backed gull
44 bar-tailed godwit
45 redwing
46 chaffinch
47 house sparrow
48 collared dove