I’ve always maintained that, whatever the weather (with the possible exception of a howling gale), it’s always possible to have a really good day birdwatching in Northumberland.\u00a0 Yesterday’s forecast didn’t promise too much in the way of good weather though and, as it turned out, we had to contend with drizzly rain for the whole day.<\/p>\n
I collected Reg and Val from Newcastle and we set off towards the Harthope Valley.\u00a0 This is one of NEWT’s favourite locations; spectacular scenery, excellent birdwatching and the all important absence of crowds.\u00a0 A holiday group from another birdwatching company were in the valley as well, though.\u00a0 Just before we reached the turning for Langleeford, a\u00a0Brown Hare<\/em><\/strong> was sitting in a\u00a0roadside field. \u00a0As we’re in June, and all of the trees are in leaf, a lot of our birding was done by ear.\u00a0 Grasshopper Warbler<\/em><\/strong> was a nice find, Oystercatchers <\/em><\/strong>were chasing each other up and down the valley, a Cuckoo<\/em><\/strong> flew past, pursued by Meadow Pipits<\/em><\/strong>,\u00a0the shivering trill of a\u00a0Wood Warbler<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0could be heard over the running water and Grey Wagtail, Common Sandpiper<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 and Dipper<\/em><\/strong> were all along the water’s edge.\u00a0 Willow Warblers<\/em><\/strong> were singing from all around, Siskin <\/em><\/strong>and Redpoll<\/em><\/strong> were picked up on call and then eventually gave excellent views, Snipe<\/em><\/strong> were displaying over a recently planted area on the opposite side of the valley, Curlews<\/em><\/strong> were singing their haunting song (so much more appropriate\u00a0on windswept, remote moorland than on the coast)\u00a0and then I heard it; a call that is familiar in the winter, but not in the Cheviot valleys in June.\u00a0 I was still trying to convince myself that I’d misheard the call, when the bird appeared in front of us – unmistakeable really, there was a Twite<\/em><\/strong>. I looked, looked away, looked again;\u00a0 no, I wasn’t imagining it.\u00a0 It’s a species that’s suspected to breed in tiny numbers in Northumberland, although there seems to be a lack of confirmed records for the breeding season.\u00a0 Perhaps it was passing through, or maybe, just maybe, there is a breeding site in the Cheviots.<\/p>\n After\u00a0the excitement of such an unexpected find, we had one major target species left for the day.\u00a0 Ring Ouzel<\/em><\/strong> is another bird that you may find on coastal headlands in the autumn, and there are sporadic wintering records as well, but the place to see them is surely the remote upland valleys where they breed.\u00a0 As we made our way up a steep-sided valley we had excellent views of a recently fledged\u00a0Dipper<\/em><\/strong>, and I could hear\u00a0an ouzel\u00a0singing.\u00a0 We continued and then the bird appeared overhead, flying from one side of the valley to the other, singing as it crossed.\u00a0 It dropped out of sight, still singing, before retracing it’s route over the valley again.\u00a0 This time we knew where it had landed so we crept along a track towards it.\u00a0 Patience and persistence paid off (as they so often do) and we enjoyed prolonged views of the bird as it sang from a clump of heather on the skyline.\u00a0 The rain was becoming colder and more persistent so we headed back to the car and then down the A697 back to civilisation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve always maintained that, whatever the weather (with the possible exception of a howling gale), it’s always possible to have a really good day birdwatching in Northumberland.\u00a0 Yesterday’s forecast didn’t promise too much in the way of good weather though and, as it turned out, we had to contend with drizzly rain for the whole […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8,5],"tags":[823,57,214,264,172,257,228,256,207,825,293,263,89,204,192,213,260],"class_list":["post-575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-cheviot-valleys","category-northumberland","tag-birdwatching","tag-brown-hare","tag-common-sandpiper","tag-cuckoo","tag-curlew","tag-dipper","tag-grasshopper-warbler","tag-grey-wagtail","tag-meadow-pipit","tag-northumberland","tag-redpoll","tag-ring-ouzel","tag-siskin","tag-snipe","tag-twite","tag-willow-warbler","tag-wood-warbler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1119,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575\/revisions\/1119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}