Our monthly WeBS count should have been done a couple of weeks ago although, with weekends from mid-March through to mid-September fairly well occupied, this morning was the first chance I’d had to do the count. With today’s tide times, and a mid-morning meeting with a potential sponsor for NEWT, I left the house just after 6am and drove to Cresswell. Our usual method of covering the 3.75 miles of our survey section is to take 2 cars, leave one at East Chevington and then drive to Cresswell in the other, leaving us with a walk north along Druridge Bay. As a solo survey it’s a 7.5 mile round journey, and good exercise on the sand. As I headed north on a deserted beach, the southwesterly wind brought icy, stinging rain. Nearly 100 Common Eiders were just offshore, 5 Common Scoter were just beyond them and a summer-plumaged Red-throated Diver brought a splash of colour. A Sand eel had managed to become stranded almost 20m above the receding tideline so I did my good deed for the day and returned it to the sea, although it initially resisted my efforts to pick it up 🙂 Sandwich Terns were flying backwards and forwards along the shore, giving their creaky, rasping call, and a summer-plumaged Sanderling was feeding alongside 2 Ringed Plovers.
With legs stretched and lungs filled with clean sea air I finished my walk and headed home. All the while I was thinking about my early birdwatching days when I would get up before dawn and cycle to what I’d identified as promising local birdwatching spots. Sometimes they produced the goods, sometimes they didn’t…but there was always that sense of having the world to yourself. Sometimes, birdwatching in Northumberland can feel like that in the middle of the day 🙂