A Birding Trip to Northumberland

 We made a return visit to Northumberland after a gap of 4 years. We just can't believe it was that long ago! This is the latest in the year we have ever visited, so apart from adding Puffins and hopefully Little & Roseate Terns to our year list, we had no great expectations.

Just before we went we tried to book on to the Farne Islands for our 'usual' visit, but unfortunately the National Trust were still limiting numbers to Inner Farne and the two landings a day were both fully booked for the duration of our stay. So we opted for a two hour Seabird Cruise around the islands, but more of that later!

We started our visit with a day at the Hauxley NR run by the Northumberland Wildlife Trust. Shall we say what a change in four years! The 'new' visitor centre, although closed, looked great, be nice to return sometime and check it out properly. It provided us with a first for the UK, a Ruddy Shelduck. It gave us distant views and in the direct sunlight poor photos, but for the record:

We clocked up 39 species for the day, not a huge amount, but not bad for the latter half of July. A close up of a male Pheasant in the sun was nice,

along with a Tree Sparrow.

We thought this Heron was a garden ornament it didn't move at all for ages.

Little Grebes swam past the hide, always nice.

Of course as you might expect loads of Geese, both Greylag and Canada.

Other highlights were a couple of Little Egrets, Common, Arctic and Sandwich Terns.

After leaving the reserve and having done the circular walk, in blistering heat, with no shade on the homeleg, we welcomed getting in the car and putting the aircon on full blast and had a short drive down to Cresswell for an Ice Cream. In all the years we have never seen anything like it, everyone from within miles must have decided to go to the beach! The track to Druridge pools was overflowing with cars and rubbish and the road on to Cresswell was also packed with parked cars, almost making it impossible to get through, but we did and managed to park at the Ice Cream shop for 15 minutes while we had our treat and watched for Dolphins. Needless to say none were seen. 😞

So we made the tortuous way back through the throng of cars, stopping at Cresswell Pond, miraculously finding a parking space. (It was getting to early evening, so thankfully some people were leaving for their tea!)

We popped in to the hide, it was pretty quite apart from Curlew, Dunlin, Lapwing and tons of Starlings:

The following day we stayed local, our digs were in Amble, so we decided to amble in Amble, look at the Market and check the place out. 

We did manage to see Shelduck, Curlew, Eider, Goosander, Cormorant, Sandwich Tern, Common Tern, Arctic Tern loads of Redshank and a single Little Tern. This was a bonus as we didn't manage to fit a walk in from Beadnell to the Little Tern colony during our stay.

Our next day was to be the aforementioned trip out around the Farne Islands, so I'll cover that in the next post.