The Nativity service is one that always puzzles me; I always feel a sense of serenity at the service but, for the main characters in the story, it must have been an incredibly stressful time. It could be an allegory of triumph of human will over adversity. As we left the nativity service at the…

Heading inland from home, the first snow that I saw was as I reached Belsay. Following the road north, the white blanket on the verges deepened and the stands of conifers were bedecked in a remarkable checkerboard pattern; there was no doubt which direction the snow had arrived from. Buzzards perched on trees and fence…

Our Cheviot trips usually run from March/April to June, but tomorrow I’m on a mission to provide photo opportunities with grouse for two of our clients. I hadn’t been into the Cheviot valleys since the flooding of early September so I decided to make the most of the nice weather and head inland. A lot…

Saturday marked the culmination of the celebrations of the 50th Anniversary of the Northumberland and Tyneside Bird Club, with a conference and evening reception at the Civic Centre in Newcastle. Luckily the winds were from the southwest, so there was no sudden exit of delegates due to a major rarity turning up in the county!…

After the drenching at Druridge while assisting with Bioblitz, and the devastation visited upon Morpeth by the torrential rain on Saturday, what would Sunday bring? Well, as the easterly winds and rain coincided with an area of high pressure over Scandinavia, the most likely outcome would be a lot of migrants…and so it proved. A…

I started yesterday with every intention of finishing my final species account for Birds in Northumbria 2007…but the great outdoors always has that magnetic pull, so I went to Druridge to assist Iain Robson for a few hours while he ran the Bird and Cetacean Watch as part of Bioblitz. The weather conditions weren’t exactly…