Early November
I'm in the cemetery again!
Rumours of shore lark took me back to the Old Cemetery Road at Hartlepool on Saturday 2nd November. Plenty of birders but no bird! However a late wheatear caught the eye of many birders that morning.
Wheatear
Wheatear
Shore larks had been reported a couple of days before at Crimdon Dene. I had never been there so I went to have a look. I saw the site of the little tern colony but little else. Iphone photo from the pony club.
Crimdon Dene
Later I moved on and went down to East Saltholme where I looked for the long-tailed duck I had seen a week earlier. I took a lot of distant photos but found later that in nearly all photos the bird has the back of his head pointing at the camera! A couple were all right.
Long-tailed Duck
RSPB Saltholme has a new slogan:
Giving nature the boot!
Saltholme
I finished up in the Phil Stead hide where a number of blackwits were close to a very full hide. I've said it before: let the pictures do the talking! Oh yes, there's a snipe and an egret in there too somewhere...
Black-tailed Godwit
Black-tailed Godwit
Black-tailed Godwit
Black-tailed Godwit
Snipe
Little Egret
Black-tailed Godwit
Black-tailed Godwit
Ditto!
We went back to the Old Cemetery Road yet again - this time for a very elusive Richard's pipit which, to my delight, my wife spotted as it flew past us down onto the dunes. She's always had a good eye for a bird. We were able to follow it in flight until it landed on the grass path by the central, eastern cemetery exit. It walked into the longer grass. We tried to get closer but it flew off over the cemetery wall back towards the southern edge of the cemetery. An excellent November tick.
Just a comment. Why do all the pager reports [without exception it seems] refer to 'in the Jewish cemetery' or 'across from the Jewish cemetery' or in this case 'just south of the Jewish cemetery' when the Jewish cemetery is only the small walled rectangle on the northern edge of the larger cemetery? Most references should surely just be to the 'old cemetery'. It's very confusing to be told a bird is in the scrub across from the Jewish cemetery as that refers to a very specific small area. As I said, just a comment!
After the pipit we went to Newburn Bridge to have our lunch. It was very high tide. Anyone new to birding and puzzled by waders could well start here: 5 species of wader in one photo! From the left: oystercatcher; ringed plover; sanderling; dunlin; turnstone.
Waders!
Oiks don't always make very good photographs, I find. This one isn't bad.
Oystercatcher
Med gull now in residence for its 4th winter and bossing the black-heads about!
Mediterranean Gull
At Saltholme we dropped into the Phil Stead hide for a coffee and chocolate. The blackwits were still close to the hide, plus redshank and teal, gleaming in the autumn sunlight.
Black-tailed Godwit
Redshank
Teal
A fox was spotted prowling along the far bank.
Fox
We called at the Wildlife Watchpoint for water rail but had to settle for moorhen - through the glass of the giant windows.
Moorhen
Carnaby surprise!
Turning into a week of surprise, last minute trips. Yesterday [5th November] I dashed off to Bridlington after lunch when the earlier reported common rosefinch at Park Rose Village was clearly not just a bird passing through but was lingering in a rowan tree outside the Original Factory Shop!
Having arrived I could see little sign of life nor, for that matter, of a rowan tree. A large blue cedar obscured the view from where I was parked. Then I heard voices. Grabbing just my bins, I wandered over. A birder was pointing his camera into the fruit-laden, leafless tree. Another couple whispered: 'Left-hand side, half way up.' There it was. My second ever rosefinch and this one was happy to be watched closely, unlike my brief encounter at Spurn Point a year or so earlier...
I strolled back to Tiggy for the camera. Incidentally the 259th British bird I have photographed.
Common Rosefinch
Not as colourful as an adult male but a nice bird nonetheless. Very beady-eyed!
Common Rosefinch
Common Rosefinch
Common Rosefinch
Common Rosefinch
Common Rosefinch
Common Rosefinch
I said there was more to come!