Having finally dug ourselves out we were glad to wander far afield again. Decided on a spell at Holy Island causeway first and walked up to Beal Sluice. Sometimes one feels a decision was the right one as we managed views of a Merlin flying along the saltmarsh heading up to Beal Pt & a Peregrine on a post to the south towards Fenham Mill. Then a flock of finches behaved admirably perching in small trees towards Beal Point with most turning out to be Twite ! We estimated 90-100 Twite with 20 Goldfinches and only the odd Linnet. Excellent close scope views obtained. Next were a few Skylark and 7 Grey Partridge (our first of the year) . At Beal Point Janet picked up the Merlin again and it landed on one of the posts in the saltmarsh. A fine female & a rare chance to scope one properly. On to Beal Sluice & Janet’s long distance vision again proved useful as another Peregrine was found looking towards Goswick. Four Pale-bellied Brent nonchalantly meandered down the channel at the sluice. On the way back another Peregrine sighting though this may have been the one seen earlier from the causeway.<\/p>\n
On to Fenham le Moor where 30 Pintail were the main interest. Then Budle Bay & Janet again scored with the scope as she picked up the wintering Greenshank in the S\/E corner of the bay. Finally Stag Rocks in gathering gloom & only one Slavonian Grebe , 3 Red-throated Diver & 40 Common Scoter noted. A Great Northern Diver was reported off here today. Excellent afternoon’s birding !<\/p>\n
TR&J Dean<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Having finally dug ourselves out we were glad to wander far afield again. Decided on a spell at Holy Island causeway first and walked up to Beal Sluice. Sometimes one feels a decision was the right one as we managed views of a Merlin flying along the saltmarsh heading up to Beal Pt & a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-127","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ntbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ntbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ntbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ntbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ntbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=127"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ntbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2904,"href":"https:\/\/www.ntbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127\/revisions\/2904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ntbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ntbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ntbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}