It’s been a hectic week for NEWT; evening pelagic last Friday, pre-walks for the Kielder Walking Festival and the Northumberland National Park Walkfest at the weekend, and Safari Trips every day since then.
I’ve posted a report of the pelagic on my personal blog ‘Diary of an Addicted Seawatcher’. The Kielder pre-walk was enlivened by 30-40 Crossbills and 2 recently fledged Common Buzzards who were ‘mewing’ at us until we passed out of their line of sight.
Our three Safaris this week have all been very different; Monday produced excellent views of 2 Otters, Tuesday was much more ‘birdy’, with 2 juvenile Marsh Harriers, Little Egret, adult Curlew Sandpiper and both Barn and Long-eared Owls and yesterday had a more invertebrate focus – Small Copper, Wall, Painted Lady and Red Admiral butterflies, Blue-tailed Damselflies and a Sand Wasp that was watched as it hunted spiders along a small section of sand dune.
Today and tomorrow I’ll be leading walks from the Ingram visitor centre as part of Family Walkfest 2009. And once all that’s done I’m going to try and get some good photos/video of Long-eared Owl. We’re going to have a lot of editing/uploading to do during the winter!