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.