Chicken Wednesday!

A strange title for this post but all we become clear!

We planned a walk from Arley to Bewdley along the River Severn. We parked up and set off in nice weather, with plenty of Mallard and Swans to start off with. As is usual this time of year there wasn't much about,  a number of House Martins were hawking around one of the riverside houses.

We stopped for a coffe in a lovely wooded area of the river path, this turned out to be lucky as shortly after the heavens opened, but we didn't get wet, we did see a Wren and Great Tit whilst waiting for the rain to pass.

We carried on a short way ans spotted a pair of Green Woodpeckers (Adult & juvenile) in the fields I then went to take some photos and then realised I had left the SD card in our PC after copying up the Spotted Flycatcher from the weekend and hadn't brought any spares out as it was only a walk. What a plonker! Still it was nice just to watch and enjoy.

A bit further on I had a brief glimpse of a Kingfisher, but Tina missed it, we did find some Mandarin Ducks though taking a rest on a fallen tree in the river.

Now we were only a mile or so from Bewdley when the heavens really opened! we got very wet indeed, this lasted a while but we carried on in our waterproofs, mind you by the time we got around to putting them we were already soaked! eventually the skies cleared and we stopped to get the sodden waterproofs off and have another coffee, meanwhile we had two more Kingfisher sightings (2 birds)

So on to Bewdley where we picked up a Nuthatch in the park just before the town. It took us longer than we thought with rains stops etc. We needed food and the pub I looked up had stopped serving lunch, so off to Wetherspoons for Chicken Wednesday, roast chicken and a pint for £7

We decided to get the train back on the Severn Valley Steam Railway and avoid the ominous cloudsin the distance, adding a Buzzard as we waited on the platform.

So due to my incompetence no pictures in this post!

Eymore Wood

On Sunday we went out for a few hours for a walk around Eymore Wood and Trimpley Reservoir.

It was all very quiet around the reservoir and river, just a few Mallard, a couple of Cormorant, A few Tufted Duck nothing much to report at all, mind you we didn't expect to see much. The odd Swift put in appearance whilst we had a coffee. We decided to continue the walk along the river and then cut back through the forest to the car park.

Apart from other walkers and taking shelter from a sudden downpour we didn't see a thing. We cut back to the car park and were crossing a field near Huntsfield Cottage when we saw a few birds flittering in the trees, we cautiously went a little closer and had found a family of 3-4 Spotted Flycatchers, a real treat for us, only our second ever sighting. I manged a quick photo before they headed off:

So back to the car with nothing to add other than a busy flight of Goldfinches. Still a lovely afternoon out though.

Next official stop:  The Birdfair at Rutland

TTFN

Northumberland Pilgrimage - The Farnes

Yes we made it! The wind had dropped so we phoned and all looked good, so we zoomed up to Seahouses, paid for the tickets and waited to get on the boat.
Now here comes the funny bit! The jetty was chaotic with loads of people waiting for different boats it was a bit of a mad house! Anyway us and another couple missed our boat in the confusion! The kind ladies from Billy Shiels sorted us out though, there was a trip leaving to Holy Island and they said they would get us to Inner Farne to hook up with or trip (much to the skippers annoyance we saw!) Anyway we did hook up but not how we thought.. The two boats met up in the middle of the North Sea and we stepped from one boat to the other and we had to step across, providing good entertainment for all on both boats!

So we landed on Inner Farne and what a great day we had:

Just a selection of some of my snaps. What a wonderful place this is..

Northumberland Pilgrimage - Part 2

A bit of a delay in writing this I am working near Derby at the moment and haven't had a lot of spare time, in fact we haven't done any birding at all since then, so August is going to be a lean month apart from a couple of trips we have planned in a couple of weeks time.

So on to Northumberland, where was I......

Ah.. I forgot one thing from the previous post, we stopped at East Chevington NR on the way back the previous evening for Marsh Harriers and were duly rewarded:

Right to continue.... So we are onto the Thursday and again no luck getting out to the Farnes, again lovley sunshine but the wind was just to strong. So we decide to spend most of the day at Hauxley NR run by the Northumberland Wildlife Trust. It was a good day, nothing out of the ordinary, but a nice mix:
A good flock of Curlews

 Shelducks, with chick

 Shelduck Chick doing a bit of gardening

 Pheasant

 Terns having a wash, there's a Sandwich Tern lurking in there as well:

 Little Grebe and chick

 More Shelducklings:

 We dropped down onto the beach for lunch, there were plenty of Oystercatchers about foraging, this one was getting its head right in:

 Plus plenty of Terns passing through taking lunch back to their partners or chicks:

We do usually see plenty of Tree Sparrows here, but not today, good job we saw them over at Cresswell the day before. In addition to what I've shown in the pics, there were plenty of Redshank, Grey heron, Canada & Greylag Geese, Mallard of course, Tufted Duck, Coot, Moorhens, Lapwing, Black and Bar Tailed Godwit, Mute Swan, Dunlin, Swallow, Sand & House Martin and a few Warblers. Not too shabby!

After Hauxley we headed back but stopped at Druridge Pools again to see if we could get better views of the Spoonbills. At first we thought they had gone, but we had timed it just right as they circled and lanaded:

After watching them for a while we headed out onto the dunes as we could see a few people sea watching and we amazed at a couple of black 'slicks' about half a mile out, so we  got the scope out to look and saw that the sea was covered in a what I can only describe as shoals of Common Scoter. A great addition for the day.

After that we headed to the far two hides and looked back over to where the Spoonbills were now settling down. We immediately found a group of about 5 Snipe, some Ringed Plover, Redshank and a couple of Little Stint.

We popped into the next hide but decided not to stay as there was Swallows nest over the door and we didn't want to worry the parents, I did take a quick snap though:

So the next day was time to drive home and we hadn't made it out to the Farnes, but we decided that if the wind was OK and the boats were running, we would go anyway and get home late.

So if I do another post, you will know if we made it!

TTFN.