Someone has turned the volume down!

I squeezed a quick hours walk around the patch before work this morning, just up to the turning circle and south as far as the Budge screen but compared to recent mornings it was like someone had turned the volume down.

There were still a few warblers singing - willow, chiffy and sedge, the odd wren and meadow pipits and reed bunting in the dunes but otherwise birds have fallen silent. A song thrush (a scarce breeder at Druridge) hadn't got the memo and belted out his repetitive song the whole time I was there.

Even at 8am there were plenty of butterflies on the wing - large skippers, ringlets, speckled woods and red admirals as well as lots of blue-tailed damselflies.

large skipper

Speckled wood - looking a bit worn now

Ringlet

There were a few of these latticed heath moths basking in the sunshine too.

latticed heath

Other than the aforementioned warblers and stuff, a family party of magpies were making a row up by the turning circle and 40-50 swifts fed low, just over the bushes. As I headed south a little egret flew over and from the Budge screen there were two spoonbills, fast asleep as usual. There were also at least 20 black-tailed godwits, most of which were the islandica subspecies. A couple of ringed plover fed on the mud.

Little egret headed north overhead

As I headed for home a grasshopper warbler piped-up from the dunes and started to reel. It's not quite autumn yet.

eBird list here

Great tit youth

The longest day

Today was the longest day of the year - not for me, when I woke up at 4.30 it was tipping it down so I went back to bed.

I was on the patch for an early start on Saturday though, birding the bushes first before looking for hoverflies later. Janet and I went to Druridge this afternoon but were dodging showers the whole time.

On Saturday I covered nearly 5km birding around the bushes and pools. In the bushes there were lots of recently fledged warblers with family parties of sedge warblers, whitethroats, blackcaps and willow warblers, adults feeding their still-dependent young. There were family groups of great and blue tits - their young a bit more independent.

Adult whitethorat

Whitethroat feeding two of its three chicks

Young sedge warbler

A weasel dodged traffic on the road

Weasel

Offshore, the scoter flock has swelled to over 900, they were a bit distant making it difficult to pick out velvets amongst them. Plenty of terns and auks offshore including 3 roseate terns (on Friday evening I picked up a single little tern feeding offshore).

Barn owls hunted all morning and were taking plenty of food away but the highlight of the morning was an adult long-eared owl in the bushes near to the Budge screen.

Barn owl with a short-tailed field vole

From the Budge screen, there was no sign of the wood or green sandpipers from the previous days but there was a single knot, two dunlin, two ringed plover and ten black-tailed godwits. The three avocet chicks are getting bigger by the day and look good for making adulthood (that's jinxed them!).

A Kestrel feeding was my first post-lockdown sighting,

Kestrel

The rest of the morning was spent with the macro lens looking for hoverflies and other stuff. I found a couple of new hoverflies for me for the patch and an amazing wasp beetle. I still need to ID some stuff but below are some photos.

A post-football visit this afternoon. heavy showers rolled in from the west so we didn't hang around. Janet went for a walk whilst I grilled the sea and then we both went to the Budge screen out of the rain. The same waders as yesterday apart from the knot had been replaced by a wood sandpiper.

A bee-mimic hoverfly - Leucozona lucorum (female)

Common Cardinal Beetle Pyrochroa serraticornis

Funky Caterpillar - the caterpillar of moth Depressaria daucella in final instar. There are only county 23 records according to Northumberland Moths

Diamondback Moth Plutella xylostella

Hoverfly Eristalis arbustorum (f)

Syrphus Sp

I thought that this was a wasp at first but it's a beetle - a wasp beetle Wasp Beetle Clytus arietis

Hoverfly Syrphus torvus (female)

Hoverfly Helophilus hybridus

Hoverfly Helophilus pendulus

Hoverfly Eristalis pertinax (female)

Marmalade hoverfly Episyrphus balteatus

Sawfly Tenthredo mesomela

22-Spot Ladybird  Psyllobora vigintiduopunctata

Bloody Cranesbill - the county flower of Northumberland

larvae of 7-spot ladybird Coccinella septempunctata but I'm not sure what the little mite thing is, there were three of them associating with the larvae.

One of the Chrysopa lacewings - needs to be ID'd but that might not be possible from a photo

Crabro cribarius  - Slender-bodied digger wasp (I saw one of these in June last year in the same place)

Crabro cribarius  - Same as above

Large Skipper Ochlodes sylvanus

Hoverfly Meliscaeva auricollis

Buff-tailed Bumble Bee Bombus terrestris

Hoverfly Tropidia scita -  a new one for me and for Druridge, it can be ID'd from the triangular 'tooth' on the hind femura

Damp Start

The weather forecast for yesterday (Saturday) wasn't conclusive as to what it would actually do, so we took the decision to try and ring today rather than yesterday. 

So, I gave the England game a dodge and got up at 4.30am to light 'mizzle', I went back to bed with the alarm set for five. It was much brighter at 5am so I set off to put some nets up. No sooner where the first two nets up when the mizzly, drizzly, rain set in again.

Nets furled, we headed to the Budge screen and met up with James 'Tintin' Common who had walked down to ring with us. A single immature spoonbill mostly slept on the Budge fields was all of note. We headed up to the Oddie hide and ringed a brood of two swallows.

It brightened up by 8am so we un-furled the nets and put some more up. We didn't ring a lot of birds, but were kept going, catching 12 new birds, six retraps and the 'control' dunnock we have caught in previous weeks.

reed warbler

This reed warbler was probably today's highlight. We re-trapped another willow warbler that was ringed as fledgling last July, re-trapping warblers is always good. Four new sedge warblers was notable, it is a good year for this species at Druridge

Ringing totals (re-traps in brackets) were:

swallow 2 pullus

robin 3 (all fledglings)

sedge warbler 4 (2)

chaffinch 3

reed warbler 1

dunnock 1 (1 control)

willow warbler (1)

wren (1)

reed bunting (1)

After we packed up the ringing site, I had a half-hour seawatch, but recorded little of note. On Saturday afternoon I had half-an-hour seawatching and saw my first arctic skua and roseate terns of the year.

Butterflies today and yesterday included painted lady, speckled wood, large slipper, small tortoiseshell and wall.

large skipper on vipers bugloss

This interesting spider was my car wheel this morning

interesting spider

134 arctic skua

135 roseate tern

Patch tick dip

My 500th blog post but I am gutted. I've just dipped a full patch tick - Mandarin Duck!

After a busy day, I got down to Druridge after six this evening, starting with a look on the sea and quick scan for owls from the big dune but if I'd gone straight to the Oddie hide I would have a patch tick in the bag. 

I didn't go to the Oddie hide because yesterday there was nothing to so see there.

So, I wander down from the big dune and bump into Alan Hall and Steve Rippon heading towards their car and tell me they'd just been watching a female mandarin duck on the big pool...."That'll be a patch tick for you?"...

They both headed down to the Oddie hide with me to show me where it had last been seen. I gave it an hour or so until we all agreed that it was either gone or had gone to roost. Gutted.

There's always tomorrow.

Aside from the anguish of dipping a patch mega, the highlights were a summer-plumaged red-throated diver offshore (first one of the autumn), a drake scaup on the big pool and the best bit of all - the long-eared owls have fledged three chicks, they were all calling on the reserve tonight.

This morning I've been up to Dunbar for the annual ringing session of the kittiwake colony there.

Dunbar Harbour kittiwake colony

I also got to ring herring gull chicks

I've been trying out the macro facility on the new camera, not sure what I am doing with it yet (like how to i get the whole damselfly in focus not just the head or tail) but here are a couple of efforts.

Azure damselfly

Large skipper and viper's bugloss

121 Scaup

No Birds!

Well, hardly any birds....Today first visit was mostly spent looking at anything other than birds.

We started at the Budge screen this morning, where this mole entertained us for about 20 minutes, even scurrying under the floor of the hide, some video will be posted tomorrow night.

We then went to the other hides, stopping at the huge viper's bugloss on the way which was alive with bees, moths, butterfly's and various other random insects - here are a few:

large skipper butterfly

silver Y moth

painted lady butterfly

common blue butterfly

(later on we bumped into Frank who had seen a hummingbird hawkmoth on the same plant - grrr)

Further up the track was this common blue damselfy

From the Oddie hide the three otter cubs where playing along the back of the big pool and from the little hide we saw that the lapwing pair had hatched three young.

So when the clouds rolled in of the North Sea and it got a bit misty, we went back to Druridge to catch and ring the chicks, they were tiny but it wasn't an easy job. Lapwing chicks crouch down when approached, they are incredibly well camouflaged, so much, you can't even see them at your feet!

Using stealth tactics of me in the hide keeping an eye on them, Janet went off to catch them. We managed to catch and ring all three, hopefully they will make it to adulthood unlike Thursday's sparrowhawk victim.

tiny lapwing chick - sporting it's new ring

and then legging it away at high speed to join it's siblings