Tuesday 12 April 2016

Tea Ticks

Sunday was one of those nice cool spring mornings, met up with Stewart at Warkworth. 
However, His arrival into the car park was one of crunching gravel and skidding tyres.. he had been tracking a male Marsh Harrier from somewhere just south of Alnmouth, I managed to get on the bird and we watched it for a few seconds as it disappeared south over Coquet Estuary.

We exchanged our proper good mornings and headed off towards the north side. Old Water Pools, dunes and the main track to the North Pier and back through the dunes. 

It turned out a really good morning for catching up with early common migrants, male Blackcap in the Picnic Site scrub, four fabulous Black Tailed Godwits flew up towards the Old Water as we headed to the estuary, a couple of Sandwich Terns were sat out on the sand bank opposite Amble Harbour and 6+ Sand Martins were buzzing around the pier.

As well as the arrivals noted, two Twite were still 'wintering' on the saltmarsh, tame and easily photographed feeding on the high tide debris..




Twite
  




Sandwich Terns

We left Warkworth quite satisfied with a nice collection of migrants and pulled up on the track by Birling poured some tea and just stood around a bit. The thing is, at this time of year even just standing outside can be good, a few small flocks of Pink Footed Geese drifted north, a Greenshank flew overhead calling, the fields around the Birling area and the Golf Course have quite a few shallow pools at the moment and this bird may have lifted from one of those. Chiff Chaff and Goldcrest were obviously moving, following the ditch that runs from the sea and inland along the track hedgerow, it seemed that way anyway, perhaps not.. 




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