Northern Experience Wildlife Tours

Category: Birdwatching

Whales, Waders and Wildfowl day (1 and) 2

After getting back to Seahouses harbour at the end of our Whale and Dolphin Cruise, Sarah headed south back towards home, and myself and Bill followed the coast north to Holy Island. The breeze had been strengthening while we were offshore, and around Holy Island it was close to unmanageable, with even a heavy stable tripod struggling to remain still enough to use the telescope. We did find Bar-tailed Godwit, Ringed Plover and Dunlin around the harbour, but soon beat a hasty retreat – via the ice cream van 🙂

Heading back down the coast in the shadow of Bamburgh Castle, we watched flocks of Eider loafing just offshore and a mixed flock of Common, Sandwich and Arctic Terns held a surprise in the shape of an adult Roseate Tern.

Dinner at The Swan was followed by discussing the plans for the next day, and on Sunday we concentrated on Druridge Bay and south east Northumberland. It turned out to be a good day for waders, with Ringed Plover, Little Ringed Plover, Dunlin, Curlew and plenty of Snipe. Perhaps the wader highlight of the day though were flocks of Black-tailed Godwit and Ruff arriving from the north east, pausing briefly to drink and rest and then departing to the south west. A bird that’s rarely seen made it’s way onto the trip list too, as the long-staying Spotted Crake at East Chevington wandered in and out of the reedbeds. Goosander, more Eider and lots of Grey Herons were around the River Coquet and it was soon time to head off, collect Sarah and go into Morpeth to eat at the excellent Nadon Thai. It was an excellent two days, with a client who was excellent company, a keen birdwatcher and knows a lot of sites in and around Norfolk, where we haven’t been for a few years now, really well.

Whales? yes. Waders? yes. Wildfowl? yes. It was the holiday that does exactly what it says on the tin 🙂

11/09/2013
Whales and Dolphins; NEWT’s North Sea Pelagic 31/08/13

Our annual Whale and Dolphin Cruise on Glad Tidings V is one of the highlights of our North Sea Pelagic programme. With over 40 people booked on to this year’s sailing, we were going to need to be organised and efficient getting everyone on to the boat – luckily I’m married to Sarah, so organisation and efficiency just seem to happen to me 🙂

Saturday was also the first day of our Whales, Waders and Wildfowl holiday, so I collected Bill from The Swan and we drove north, pausing in Amble to collect Ruth as we passed through. Warm, sunny, windy and with plenty of whitecaps offshore were conditions that could make finding cetaceans tricky. As we sailed south we came across a raft of Gannets, Sooty and Manx Shearwaters and plenty of Grey Seals ‘bottling’ amongst them. There wasn’t any sort of feeding activity of note though, but eventually we managed brief views of a small group of Harbour Porpoise nearby. Continuing on our way, there was a sighting of Minke Whale from the front of the boat…just as I watched a White-beaked Dolphin breaching away to the east 🙂 Eventually we had seven or eight dolphins around the boat, allowing everyone on board the opportunity to enjoy close views of our favourite cetacean. As we made our way slowly back towards Seahouses, two more Minke Whales appeared and we’d struck gold, silver and bronze in one trip 🙂

03/09/2013
“Not at all like a Pintail”

How do you know what a particular species is? That’s a frequently asked question on our tours and, fortunately, some species have a characteristic that makes them memorable.

I collected Christine and Jean from just north of Morpeth and we headed down to Church Point to collect Sue and Ray. Our evening mini-safari was concentrating on Druridge Bay and the southeast Northumberland coast. Late August is always an interesting time to be on the coast, with passage waders moving through, but also the occasional surprise among the wildfowl too. Scanning through the Mallards, Teal, Tufted Duck and Gadwall, I saw three ducks flying in. The unmistakeable black beaks and elegant demeanour of the new arrivals marked them out immediately as Pintail. A beautiful duck in breeding plumage, but still very distinctive in plainer dress too and we watched them and discussed just how they differ from other ducks.

Later in the trip Christine described a dress worn recently by a TV presenter as ‘glaiky’. Now, that’s a word I haven’t heard for a while. It’s usually used to describe a person who is odd, daft, thoughtless, foolish, clumsy. When Sue asked what it meant Jean had an excellent answer “Inelegant, not at all like a Pintail“. Then, she turned to me and said “Ha. See, I was paying attention”. So, from now on, Pintail will be described as not glaiky 🙂

03/09/2013
Stoatally different to yesterday…

By extraordinary coincidence, one of our least observed mammals put in an appearance for the second consecutive day…

I collected David, Jackie and Alexander from Bamburgh and we headed south to start their Prestige Tour of the Northumberland Coast. As Swallows and House Martins flitted about low over the water in front of us, a Stoat proved elusive as it darted in and out of the vegetation close to the water’s edge, momentarily startling the dozing ducks before vanishing back into the edge of a reedbed. As ever something wholly unexpected appeared, on this occasion a Peregrine over Cresswell village. A Roe Deer walking through an arable field appeared like a disembodied head – only popping up, like a Jack-in-the-box, every few metres as it made it’s way across the field.

Another elusive mustelid put in a brief appearance too, as a Badger trotted along between reedbeds, but unfortunately hidden from view by the vegetation on our side of the pool. As dusk approached, pipistrelle bats were flitting back and forth, tiny Common Froglets hopped across the path in front of us and the drive back to Bamburgh produced another impressive mammal, as a Brown Hare loped along the verge as we passed.

03/09/2013
Breathtaking menace

One of the species that our clients are always keen to see is the Otter. From my own perspective though, one of it’s smaller relatives is a much more attractive mustelid.

I collected Jackie, and Steve and Karen, from Church Point, and we set off on an exploration of Druridge Bay and the Northumberland coast. As we sat scanning a coastal pool, watching for any sign of agitation among the assembled Mallards, Gadwall, Tufted Ducks, Little Grebes, Teal and Mute Swans, there was a rustling in the grass just in front of us and a Stoat popped it’s head out. I started making quiet squeaking noises, and soon it peered out at us, then came out in the open and reared up on it’s hind legs – presumably fooled by my pishing into thinking that a small rodent was in trouble and in need of a Stoat to do it’s good deed for the day and end it’s misery 🙂 The Stoat is one of those species that are fairly common and widespread, but rarely seen. When you do get one sitting out in full view though it really is a quite beautiful creature; lithe and muscular, inquisitive and deadly, it was a real treat to have this little predator right in front of us.

As the evening wore on, small groups of Starlings were gathering ready to roost, Snipe seemed to be everywhere that we went and the eternal game of cat and mouse, between predators and prey, that is the natural world was still all around us as the sun dropped below the horizon away to the west.

03/09/2013
Beauty in the ‘mundane’

LBJ. No, not the 36th President of the United States, but the acronym used by many birdwatchers to describe any relatively small, nondescript brown bird – ‘Little Brown Job’. Over the last few years, a number of our clients have applied that term to two birds that I always think deserve closer attention…

I collected Jo and Kirsty from Alnwick for their second consecutive day out with me and we headed straight up the coast and made our way on to Holy Island. Curlews were passing overhead as we walked around the bits of the island that weren’t full of other people, those two LBJ’s, Skylark and Meadow Pipit, were dodging in and out of long grass in the fields by the path, Kirsty started photographing Swallows and quickly progressed to using flash to freeze the action as they hovered in front of us feeding beakfuls of flies to recently fledged juveniles and Golden Plover and Oystercatcher were probing around rockpools as Grey Seals bobbed about in the gentle surf just offshore. Edges are always a productive area; edges of fields, woodland, moorland and the shoreline – that ever shifting edge of the sea and the land. That latter edge produced some stunning Bar-tailed Godwits, and an impressively large group of very vocal Grey Seals.

As we continued back down the coast the mist thickened and we were eventually in the surreal position of having blazing sunshine on our backs and visibility of less than 100m in front of us. As a loose flock of Eiders drifted close inshore and then back out again, and Swallows and House Martins hawked insects low over the beach, a dark menacing shape drifted out of the mist, passed in front of us, and then drifted back into the impenetrable white mass. Always a bird to grab the attention on a seawatch, the Arctic Skua was only in view for a few seconds as it made it’s way south along the coast, and we headed inland into glorious weather again.

30/08/2013
Predators

The one group of birds that have gripped my imagination and my attention since I was very young are the birds of prey. Loved by many, hated by a few, persecuted by the ignorant, the stupid and the self-involved…

Two raptors put in an appearance during our safari around Druridge Bay and the Northumberland coast last week, and they’re both species that I’ll never tire of watching. As I drove our carload (Sharon and June, Francis and Julie, Jo and Kirsty) between Embleton and Warkworth, the bird that is the embodiment of power, musculature, speed and scythe-winged menace carved an arc across the sky alongside the road. Persecuted by gamekeepers, pigeon-fanciers and egg collectors, and once decimated by a population crash caused by pesticides, the sight of a Peregrine beating it’s way majestically across the landscape is one that should stir the heart of everyone, birdwatcher and non-birdwatcher alike.

The second raptor of the day was a species that, if such a thing is possible, manages to provoke even more outrage than the Peregrine. As we scanned the shadowy edges of a pool at dusk searching, unsuccessfully, for an Otter, I could see that a distant rock didn’t look quite right. With the increased magnification offered by our telescope the ‘rock’ resolved into the familiar shape of a Sparrowhawk. As well as gamekeepers, pigeon-fanciers and everyone else with a bee in their bonnets about Peregrines, the Sparrowhawk has managed to make itself even less popular by hunting in urban and suburban gardens. Bird tables attract small birds, and small birds attract Sparrowhawks…now, while I can understand the indignation of anyone who puts food out for their local birds, only to see their feeding station become a fly-through fast food outlet for a Sparrowhawk, that’s the way that nature works; you have large numbers of very small creatures (e.g. insects) which are food for a smaller number of slightly larger creatures (e.g. Blue Tits), which in turn are food for a very small number of even larger birds (e.g. Sparrowhawks). A number of organisations, acting very disingenuously with hidden self-interest, would have people believe that there’s a Sparrowhawk population of plague proportions and it’s busy decimating the tits, sparrows and finches in all of our gardens. Wouldn’t it be better if we could all appreciate the beauty, adaptation and precision of our birds of prey?

30/08/2013
Deep water; NEWT’s North Sea Pelagic 14/08/2013

Probably my favourite pelagic of all of the North Sea pelagic trips that we run (although I enjoy all of them immensely!) is our 10hr Farne Deeps – Northumberland’s ‘Ultimate Pelagic’. The forecast looked about as promising as it gets and I arrived at Royal Quays in good time, to discover that most of our participants were already there 🙂 This was just a day before I would be heading south to the British Birdwatching Fair and five of our participants would also be visiting Rutland over the coming weekend.

As we sailed north east we soon found our first cetaceans of the day, a small pod of Harbour Porpoise. 10 minutes later our progress northeast was slowed as we enjoyed prolonged views of a Minke Whale. Continuing towards the Farne Deeps, a deep-water offshore area that I’ve been interested in since the late 1990’s and the North East Cetacean Project has been surveying since 2009, we encountered our first White-beaked Dolphins of the trip. In an interesting rolling swell seabirds were passing by too; Fulmars, Gannets, Kittiwakes, Guillemots, Razorbills, Manx and Sooty Shearwaters, Great and Arctic Skuas and the occasional Puffin all attracted interest. Small groups of White-beaked Dolphins were found in locations where we expected them before we headed further offshore to the area that we’ve shown to hold large aggregations of dolphins in the mid-late summer. Almost exactly where we would expect them to be we found several dolphins breaching. Others began bow-riding and soon there were groups of White-beaked Dolphins in every direction; tail-slapping, breaching, spy-hopping and just generally performing. Eventually as many as 60 of these stunningly beautiful dolphins were in view and all of the photographers on board were busy filling their memory cards. 16 years of organising North Sea pelagic trips and they just get better every year 🙂

27/08/2013
“That’s a big dorsal fin…”; NEWT’s North Sea Pelagic 10/08/2013

Sometimes things go right, sometimes things go wrong, and sometimes things go just right and completely wrong all at the same time…

We set sail from Beadnell with a full boat, and stopped just outside the harbour to ask a local yachtsman if he’d seen any whales or dolphins during the day. “Yes, White-beaked Dolphins, about 6 of them, 3 miles E of Boulmer…6 hours ago”. Even though his sighting was before lunchtime, it was still encouraging news, particularly as our plan was to head south as far as Boulmer anyway.

Gannets, Fulmars, Guillemots, Razorbills and Puffins were soon spotted and then, as we headed from Craster towards Boulmer, Andy spotted a dark shape away to the east. We stopped and waited, then it surfaced again. Guessing where it would surface next I lifted my binoculars and then almost dropped them as the centrally-placed, upright, dorsal fin of an Orca passed across my field of view! I’m notoriously sceptical of claims of Orca in the north east but, with over 1000h offshore, I always thought I’d bump into one eventually 🙂 I needed a longer lens on my camera so I reached into my camera bag, took out a 300mm f2.8, removed the 70-200 from the camera…and then broke the camera lens mount as I tried to attach the longer lens 🙁 As the distant dark shape appeared again, still heading slowly north, we suddenly had White-beaked Dolphins close by too. Eventually we had ~20 of them close to the boat, and I was stuck with one broken camera and a spare camera body that had decided that it wasn’t going to communicate properly with the lens. I managed to get a few record shots of the dolphins, and planned to set my alarm for early on Sunday morning so I could try to sort out camera issues before heading offshore on a North East Cetacean Project survey.

21/08/2013
“I am Gadwall…”

After the heavy rain of Monday, it was good to drive to Newbiggin, to collect Bryan and Zoe & Simon, in warm sunshine and broken cloud. Our evening Otter mini-Safari would take in the best of Druridge Bay and southeast Northumberland…

One thing that I always enjoy is the response to bird names from clients who’ve never come across a particular species before. Godwit is a name that always raises a chuckle, and both Bar-tailed Godwit and Black-tailed Godwit, resplendent in their breeding finery, were among the noisy flocks of Redshank and Curlew. Turnstones were also looking particularly stunning, two juvenile Marsh Harriers were drifting over reedbeds, a particularly dark male Pheasant couldn’t make his mind up which way to run when we stopped to admire him and a Stoat poked it’s head out of the grass, then back in, then out again, before finally running across in front of us. Gadwall and Wigeon invoked more bemusement at bird names and we added Red Admiral, Meadow Brown and Magpie Moth to the trip list. Small groups of Starlings were heading to roost and it was time for us to head to our final site of the evening.

As the sun dropped towards the horizon we settled to scan for any indication of Otter activity. A Sparrowhawk passed through, causing consternation in the Swallows, Sand Martins and House Martins and a Common Snipe was illuminated by a patch of sunlight, raising it from the level of ‘brown bird with long bill that pokes it’s face in mud’ to something quite sublime. Then, a sudden panic among the ducks. Females with ducklings were fanning out rapidly from one edge of the pond and we intensified our scanning of the reedy margins. Nothing, but the birds weren’t settling. Then a pair of Mute Swans gave a call that we’ve come to associate with one thing, and it was only a matter of time…in the dark shadow of a reedbed, I saw a line of bright water appear. Everyone’s attention turned to that edge of the pool and then the Otter popped up at the surface 🙂 For 20 minutes it made it’s way steadily across the water, including a stunning few minutes in the reflection of the sunset, before finally vanishing into the darkening gloom.

As we headed back towards Newbiggin, the discussion turned back to bird names and led to one of my all time favourite things that any client has said “I am Gadwall, a wizard of the elven kingdom, and you are Turnstone, a Dwarf” 🙂

07/08/2013