This week was scheduled to be a non-tour week, as the Landrover was due to be serviced and also going in for its latest safety inspection with Wansbeck District Council. Now, this might be a pain but it’s a requirement for any company carrying it’s clients in a vehicle and it provides peace of mind for our clients that they are carried in a vehicle that is fully licenced, insured and tested to exacting safety standards. Of course, it passed 🙂

The spare time that has been generated this week just happened to coincide with promising weather conditions. Promising enough for me to spend several hours on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday seawatching from Church Point, Newbiggin. Monday was fairly quiet, Tuesday was quiet as well, apart from a frantic 10 minute spell when we had an adult Pomarine Skua, juvenile Long-tailed Skua and 6 Great Skuas. On Wednesday morning the persistence finally paid off as I found a Great Shearwater heading north. Walking back to the carpark, elated at having found such a magnificent, and scarce, bird, I was stunned as a small, incredibly bright, warbler flew past me. Sneaking up to the wall around the cemetery allowed me to get a better view as the bird sat on a gravestone – even more stunning when perched, it was a Yellow-browed Warbler. So, a seabird that breeds in the Tristan da Cunha islands of the South Atlantic, and a tiny warbler that breeds 3000k away from us in east Asia, both managed to appear at a small fishing village on the Northumberland coast within 2hrs of each other. And that’s why I’ll never get tired of going out and observing wildlife – you just never know what’s going to happen next.