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Wax(w)ing lyrical
Yesterday was a Druridge Bay Safari and, after collecting Katrina, Craig and their boys from Church Point, I was astonished to see how much snow was on the ground as we drove towards Cresswell. A Stoat played hide-and-seek with us…and proved to be masterful 🙂 The plummeting overnight temperatures had frozen nearly all of the…
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Not bad for mid-Feb
Yesterday I led our first Safari Day of this week, to Lindisfarne and the North Northumberland coast. Although I really enjoy trips where the main quarry is Red Squirrel/Badger/Otter/Fox/Roe Deer my lifelong love affair has been with birdwatching. Northumberland is a top-quality destination for a winter birdwatching trip; just ask any of the writers/photographers who we’ve…
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(Black)game on
With Spring drawing ever closer, and our North Pennines Safaris starting in just over a month, we decided to spend Sunday checking all of our regular Black Grouse sites. Although the winter may have been expected to do some real damage to the population, we managed to find 24 Blackcocks and 9 Greyhens, split between…
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Life through a (hand) lens
Monday was the second classroom session of the NHSN Lichens and Bryophytes course. On Sunday, while I was out with Sarah on a walk through three atlas tetrads in Harwood, we found some interesting colonies of Cladonias lichens on the upturned root edges of some windblown Spruce. As the lichens course is currently looking at Heath and…
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Big Garden Birdwatch
We had a leisurely hour of birdwatching yesterday morning. With all of the feeders stocked with top class bird food from Poltross, and a bacon and egg butty and a mug of coffee in hand, we settled down into our respective positions on either side of the kitchen. With commentary on the dismantling of Andy…
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Deskbound
Not something I particularly enjoy but I’m currently trying to juggle at least four separate projects ahead of the ‘busy season’ starting in February. That means a lot of time in the office and birdwatching limited to our garden and the edge of Choppington Woods. After a couple of months of the Chaffinch flock containing…
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Magic moments
We’ve spent the last 3 days running a birdwatching press trip on the Northumberland coast. Now, I’m not going to spoil the undoubtedly excellent article that will be written about the trip, but this morning we had one of those experiences that just take your breath away. After a full day around the Lindisfarne NNR…
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Layer upon layer of food glorious food
No, not a post about the culinary delight I conjoured up yesterday for Sarah (butternut squash stuffed with bacon, blue cheese, garlic, creme fraiche and honey) although that was a bit of a milestone in my domestication 😉 No, it’s a post about an unexpected bounty that our garden birds are reaping currently. I usually…
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Snowbound
OK, not quite, but since December 31st we’ve had about a foot of snow in total. I cancelled our Otter Safari on Tuesday for safety reasons. That decision proved to be the right one as we had heavy snowfall on Tuesday afternoon, making the roads even more hazardous than they already were. I drove to Wallsend…