Back to Northumberland

Went back to Northumberland to visit the new site I'd scoped out last week, and it went rather nicely!

I'd pointed out an area to our client last week that looked like it had potential for Peregrine, today there was a Peregrine patrolling it for most of the day! Excellent, the bonus here was discovering a couple of Peregrine Pellets, not seen these before, amazingly they were full of bird rings! All Racing Pigeon rings!! We've brought them back so will be enjoyable to see how far the Racers had come from!!

The next bit of enjoyment came from a mature stand of trees that I'd told our client looked good for Goshawks. Today there was an adult male Goshawk flying round them! At one stage it flew fairly close to me giving incredible views!

There was other interest in the form of fairly constant flow of Raven, and also good numbers of Crossbill, no Waxwing unfortunately, though would have had more joy looking for them along the A1 rather than in the middle of a conifer plantation I guess!

Congratulations to Tim who has today equalled the York Area year list with the sighting of Waxwing in York.  This take him to 170 species - subject to acceptance...  There is a very high probability that he will go on to break the record now I think as he still needs some 'winter species' such as Hen Harrier (one adult male seen at North Duffield today!), Bean Goose, Bewick's Swan, Hawfinch etc... If only Tim had bothered with this beautiful adult male Whinchat I found back in April..... Waxwing would have been a nice way to break the record...

Whinchat phone-scoped in a rain storm hence black dot on lens!