Northern Experience Wildlife Tours

Tag: Great Tit

Now, that was unexpected

I collected Ian and Pauline from Rothbury for a Prestige Tour of Druridge Bay and southeast Northumberland and headed towards the coast in what could only be described as a stiff breeze 😉

Nuthatches, Great Tits, Blue Tits, Coal Tits and a Treecreeper were all watched as we sat amongst the trees and Pauline spotted our only Red Squirrel of the trip as it ran between patches of fern nearby.

Beside the River Coquet a Grey Heron sat impassively, Goosanders were sleeping along the riverbank and Curlew prodded around in the mud. The wader roost at East Chevington was a bit lacking in variety; lots of Lapwings, 20 Ruff, 30 Curlew and single Knot and Bar-tailed Godwit. An unfamiliar call heralded the arrival of 4 Snow Geese, accompanied by the 3 Bar-headed Geese that have been wandering around Druridge Bay this summer, and a juvenile Marsh Harrier was tossed around on the wind. A good selection of ducks was on offer; Mallard, Shoveler, Teal, Wigeon, Tufted Duck, Pochard, Gadwall and Pintail. Birdwatching can be tricky in strong wind, but there was plenty to see. As we drove towards Druridge Pools, I stopped the car so we could look at an unfamiliar shape flying from Cresswell towards Druridge. A (presumably) escaped Eagle Owl! Druridge produced another magical moment as well, with a juvenile Peregrine hunting Teal above the main pool.

As the final traces of daylight faded, a Tawny Owl serenaded us as the wind whipped around our ears.

13/09/2011
Patience pays off

Finding Red Squirrels on a Bank Holiday Monday had the potential to be a tricky task. With a good weather forecast, all of our local woodlands were likely to be filled with visitors. I headed up to Alnwick, to collect Tracy, Graham, Eleanor and Joe, before the rush started, and Sarah set off at the same time on a related mission…

By the time I arrived at our favourite squirrel site, with a car-load of clients, feeders had been checked and strategic areas baited. Jays, Great Tits and Woodpigeons were all in the trees around us, and Eleanor soon picked out the sound of a Red Squirrel in the canopy high overhead. We waited, patiently and quietly, and then Joe spotted movement along a branch and a Red Squirrel ran down the trunk of a nearby tree and tucked in to the provided feast.

After our woodland excursion a couple of hours of birdwatching in southeast Northumberland and Druridge Bay produced good sightings of Grey Heron, Little Grebe, Kestrel, Common Buzzard, Stock Dove and a juvenile Mediterranean Gull in amongst a mass of Black-headed Gulls from a landfill site.

Wildlife doesn’t perform to order, but when you’ve spent some time concentrating, listening and focusing on every sound and every movement there’s a good feeling when that effort is rewarded 🙂

30/08/2011
Feeding time

I’ve never been good at sitting in the office and concentrating on one task for any length of time. Having an office window that looks out over the 76ha of mixed woodland of Choppington Woods LNR is a real blessing, allowing me to mix work and birdwatching. When I need to stretch my legs, a quick trip downstairs lets me open the patio door and turns the kitchen into a very comfortable and convenient bird photography hide.

Our garden is currently hosting at least 8 Bramblings, along with Greenfinches, Goldfinches, Chaffinches, Bullfinches, Blue, Great, Coal and Long-tailed Tits, occasional visits from Siskin, Redpoll and Treecreeper and regular fly-throughs by our local Sparrowhawks.

It’s a wonder I ever get any work done 🙂

Goldfinch
Chaffinch
Bullfinch
Brambling
Brambling

10/02/2011
Another big freeze

Here we go again…

It’s hard to believe that we posted on the blog back in January about the big freeze last winter and here we are again in a similar position already before the end of November (although at least at the moment it isn’t so prolonged).

I went in to Newcastle last Wednesday for a seminar about the IMCORE project, and there was a bit of light snowfall. When I came out of the Ridley Building an hour later the world was white, and it’s just gone on from that point. After Sarah got home from work on Thursday evening the next time we used either of the cars was when we dug her car out of the snow this morning so she could go to work. We’ve made the most of the last few days though; walking the 2 miles there (and 2 miles back) each day to visit a friend who’s now in a residential care home, doing most of the admin in 3 days that we would usually do through the winter (including adding all of our 2011 trips to the website) and finalising a couple of projects that we’ve been working on.

Birdwatching in our little part of southeast Northumberland has been interesting for the last few days. We’ve got an ever-expanding flock of Coal, Great and Blue Tits, Dunnocks and Wrens are now ever present around the feeding station and a very optimistic pair of Collared Doves were mating at the top of the Apple tree earlier this morning. Two pairs of Bullfinches are regular visitors but other finches are in short supply; there’s just a single pair of Chaffinches, we’ve only had one visit from Goldfinches in the last few days and, particularly worrying, we haven’t seen any Greenfinches around the feeders at all. A Sparrowhawk is still regularly patrolling over Choppington Woods and a flock of 50-60 Redwings flies out from the woods each morning.

Now, after a morning of blue skies, it’s just started snowing again.

29/11/2010
Garden Birdwatch

I had not planned to have a birding weekend this weekend – with fine weather forecast and no appointments that would take me out of the house for more than an hour or so, this is the first weekend this year that I have been able to get into the garden, and it needs a lot of tidying up. Although some would say that the “wild” effect was good, there is wild and there is wild! Following an early(ish) morning run by the River Wansbeck, where Jays were active in the overhead canopy, Moorhen and Mallard were on the river and the sound of a Mute Swan in flight just over our heads alerted us to its presence, it was back home for more physical effort in the garden. It was clear that the garden was already a hive of activity. Blackbirds have been busy gathering nesting material, Dunnocks are dancing for their lives (which could keep me entertained all morning) and the air was filled with the sound of Robins and Great Tits. I am having a rest from the garden now, but the birds are still active, now that they can get back onto the feeders without me in the way!

27/03/2010
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 Murray in the background, binoculars were trained on the feeders, the ground, the shrubbery and the Ash tree. After a slow start, things began to gather pace and we finished with 76 birds of 20 species;

Collared Dove 4

Wood Pigeon 2

Jackdaw 1

Carrion Crow 1

House Sparrow 1

Starling 7

Blue Tit 2

Great Tit 3

Coal Tit 7

Willow Tit 2

Long-tailed Tit 3

Chaffinch 14

Greenfinch 5

Goldfinch 2

Bullfinch 4

Goldcrest 1

Robin 6

Dunnock 2

Blackbird 5

Redwing 4

There were a few absentees as well, all seen regularly in the days leading up to the Big Garden Birdwatch;

Jay

Great Spotted Woodpecker

Sparrowhawk

Siskin

Maybe 25 species in 1hr is a target to aim for in our garden next year.

01/02/2010
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 try to fill all of our bird feeders just as it’s getting dark, that way the birds don’t get disturbed (not that it seems to bother some of them – Coal Tits will often just move to slightly higher branches in the apple tree, Robins seem to have no problem sitting just a few feet away). Inevitably some seed gets spilled. There’s also a reasonable amount of seed on the ground because the Coal Tits will sit on the feeders and discard anything they don’t fancy at the time. With several days of snowfall over the last few weeks this was creating something that I hadn’t realised; layers of food sandwiched between each successive snowfall. Now that the thaw is well under way, although there is still plenty of snow down here on the low ground, these layers of chilled bird seed are being exposed. 30 Chaffinches have been under the tree for most of today, and 8 Greenfinches have been around as well. After a complete absence of sightings in recent weeks, a Great Spotted Woodpecker has returned to the garden. At least one Brambling is still making sporadic appearances and the Blue, Coal and Great Tits are almost too numerous to count. As we’re feeding in parts of Choppington Woods, and some of our neighbours have well-stocked bird feeders we might expect numbers to decrease but we’ve got more birds now than in the depths of the snow and ice last week. Time to refill the feeders and dream of a rare thrush, bunting or accentor 🙂

12/01/2010
All is quiet

The world around us was cloaked in white as we walked home from The Swan early this morning. A Tawny Owl was calling from the woods, but there was little other sound – muffled as it was by the snow. By the time we woke up, there was a lot more snow than there had been when we finally fell into bed. To shake off the lingering after-effects of Old Year’s Night we decided to take a walk around Choppington Woods, wrapped up warm and armed with a camera. Photography, rather than birdwatching was our main aim, and that was fortunate as there were a lot more birds in our garden than we encountered on the walk; Great, Blue, Coal and Willow Tits, Greenfinch, Chaffinch and Bullfinch, Robin, Wren, Dunnock and Blackbird were around the feeders and, bird of the day, a Common Buzzard flying north over our allotment. Snow can make a relatively mundane landscape into a photogenic delight, but exposure calculations can be tricky and we spent a lot of time checking compositions and looking for obvious ‘lead-in’ lines. As we made our way back towards home 350 Pink-footed Geese flew south overhead. Moving ahead of more wintry weather maybe?

The view from our patio 01/01/2010

Willowburn Pasture and a frozen flood

Following in a Moorhen's footsteps

Choppington Woods pond from the new boardwalk

Sarah scanning the trees

Footpath and fence along the Willow Water

01/01/2010
A change in the weather

The feeders in our garden have been busier in the last couple of days than at any time during this winter. No less than 6 Blackbirds have taken up residence, 3 or 4 Robins are posturing and defending territories, a steady stream of Blue, Great and Coal Tits, along with our 2 regular Willow Tits, are emptying the feeders rapidly and a flock of 8 Long-tailed Tits are putting in daily appearances. Chaffinch numbers are way down on previous winters, but Greenfinches are now almost ever-present during daylight hours and three pairs of Bullfinches are never far away. It’s interesting that, even on a very short-distance scale, there’s such a noticeable movement of birds from their ‘normal’ habitat (Choppington Woods) to the gardens around the edge of the woods whenever the weather turns colder. Birdwatching doesn’t get any easier than sitting in the kitchen, glass of port in one hand and a slice of Christmas cake in the other 🙂

First thing this morning everything was frozen solid again. However, by lunchtime when Martin took Dad to the railway station there was a noticeable thaw – even though the thermometer was showing the temperature having only just crept above freezing. Then it started to rain and most of the remaining patches of ice and snow vanished. The birds were still around in the numbers of recent days though and, if the weather forecasts are anything to go by, we’re in for some more very hard winter weather at the end of this year and the start of the new one. Wrap up warm.

29/12/2009
The little fir tree

As Chair of Governors at our local First School, I had an invitation to attend the Christmas production this afternoon. It was a heartwarming tale of a little fir tree who was teased for being so small but eventually found his place as a Christmas tree in a children’s hospital. The characters included several fir trees, angels, snowflakes, raindrops, sunbeams, doctors, nurses, foxes, owls, rabbits and a woodcutter…as well as kings, shepherds, Mary and Joseph.

Which brings us nicely to the little fir tree on our patio. I haven’t had as much time to work on my bonsai display as I would have liked this year (one of the perils of running your own business…) so most of the trees have developed dense, lush foliage. I have been regularly trimming any over long shoots so they’re all still quite compact. The display sits midway between six feeders in the apple tree and two feeders on the garden wall, so it’s a regular perch for many of the birds that are visiting. As the weather has turned towards wintry, the number of birds in the garden has increased to the point where it’s almost impossible to watch everything that’s going on. Sarah was at home this morning and we spent a little while just watching the comings and goings. The highlight was two Willow Tits together but there were 15+ Coal Tits, 5 or 6 Bullfinches, 10 Chaffinches, 4 House Sparrows, 4 Greenfinches, a couple of Goldfinches and little groups of Blue and Great Tits. Birdwatching begins at home…and once we get some cold, frosty or snowy weather, my bonsai display should produce some excellent photo opportunities as well.

A cold, wet mid-December night might not seem that promising in terms of wildlife but we had something new for the garden about an hour ago when a Winter Moth Operophtera brumata landed on the outside of the kitchen window. Our little southeast Northumberland garden now has records of about 250 different species of moth. It helps that there’s a 76ha woodland behind us though.

14/12/2009