Spring ?

It's hard to tell at the moment, we seem to be at that time of year when the weather is on a knife edge.
At Branton Ponds the wild life seems to be also unsure, whilst the trees are full of singing Chiffchaffs and Willow Warblers we had 2 Whooper Swans fly over a few days ago and not unusually there are still one or two Wigeon feeding up on the grassy banks. However the season still battles on, male Tufted Ducks are forming groups and surrounding lone females, Sand Martins are hawking the water along with ever increasing numbers of Swallows and as if to show the spring is moving forwards and has not stalled we had our first Common Sandpipers of the year when 3 turned up on the west pond. Yippee here comes summer!.   

Natural history from the last few days

On Friday 1st April, there was a large movement of thrushes but not in the direction you would expect - in a south westerly direction!  There were at least 6 flocks of between 40 and 100+ birds of mainly Redwings and Fieldfares.  Presumably this movement was a result of easterly winds pushing migratory flocks back into the UK?

Saturday, Jill and I had a stroll along Warkworth beach.  Highlights included a good selection of common waders on the estuary, Little egret, 5 Whooper swans flying north, 1 Stonechat, 3 Sandwich terns and a Great crested grebe on the sea.

U15's rugby was in Newcastle on Sunday morning.  A detour on the way home via Druridge Bay produced 6 Avocets, adult male Peregrine and the Long-billed dowitcher at Cresswell.  The Peregrine was interesting as it was a couple of Dunlin and their slinking behaviour that suggested that there was a bird of prey in the air.  Sure enough, a Peregrine and Common buzzard were located circling north.  The Dunlin's eye-sight must be fantastic as the falcon was a mere dot to me.  The Dunlin maintained slinking behaviour well after the birds had disappeared.  This is not the first time I have found birds of prey whilst watching waders change of behaviour.

The Budge Pool, Drurige Bay NWT reserve produce a good number of Shoveler, a pair of Pintail, displaying Lapwing, 2+ Sand martins and a male Marsh harrier.  A Small tortoiseshell butterfly was seen in the dunes.

Reptiles

After all of the sightings of Adders over the past few weeks today seemed an ideal opportunity to find some more, other members of the group had the same idea when Stewart Sexton and John Rutter arrived at the ponds,by mid-day the count was up to 12 Adders and there was the bonus of 2 Slow Worms enjoying the sunshine and warmth.

Spring...

At Howick too, spring has sprung with my first toad of the year, buff tailed Bumblebee and Early Grey moth....

Early Grey

Toad emerging from hibernation.

Buff tailed Bumblebee

More signs of spring

It seems like every day spring comes a little closer at Branton, a walk around the ponds today produced song from almost every tree and bush, Song Thrushes are especially prominent, with one bird doing very good copies of waders such as Redshank and Green Sandpiper. A Little Egret made a welcome visit to the west pond, Coltsfoot is in flower, wetter areas have clumps of frogspawn, whilst in the reedbeds the Frog chorus is in full voice and where last week Adder numbers stood at 2, today that number had risen to 8,spring is definitely in the air.

White winger

Once again this year Branton Ponds turned up trumps, we were getting ready to go out with the dog when we got a phone call from Alan Hall to say that he and Stevie Rippon had a 1st winter Iceland Gull on Branton Ponds, quick change of plan and we were on site in less than 5 minutes, only to find it had flown off. After checking other local sites we decided it was gone forever, not so, whilst checking Branton later I suddenly saw it sitting on the water, which was astounding as 2 minutes earlier it had not been there. After swimming around for a while it eventually took off and headed to the east , hopefully in the next few days it may return.

Geese

We decided to have a morning at the coast and so with that in mind headed off to Stag Rocks which was very quiet only birds of note being 6 Common Scoter along with several Common Eider, there was no sign of the Black Scoter reported earlier in the week. Our next destination was Harpers Heugh which proved to be the most productive of the day, in the field next to the road were a number of geese which were mainly made up of Greylags(60) and Pink-feet(110). On searching carefully through the flock we were pleased to find a single Tundra Bean Goose(rossicus) hiding amongst the Pink-feet, further scanning produced 3 White-fronted Geese of the Greenland race(flavirostis) along with 3 Pale-bellied Brent Geese and 18 Barnacle Geese, not a bad selection for such a small flock. Our final destination was Fenham le Moor where we encountered a dozen more Brents plus Redshanks, Knot, Turnstones and a respectable flock of some 30 Pintails.