Holy Island was fresh and windy today. The harbour was quiet apart from some Eider, Shag and R B Merganser. At the Lough a selection of Ducks could be seen, which were mostly sheltering from the wind in the reeds. These included 10+ Teal, 20+ Mallard, 6+ Wigeon, a single female Tuftie and a pair of Shoveler. There was also a Little Grebe, a single Moorhen and a Robin.<\/p>\n
On the sand, not far from the causeway, there were at least 100 Brent Geese<\/strong>, 9 Grey Plover<\/strong> and over a dozen Bar-tailed Godwits amongst lots of other coastal waders.<\/p>\n The causeway proved more entertaining however with up to three Little Egrets<\/strong>, which are always a great bird to see. We were also lucky to experience a dramatic chase which lasted about five minutes, involving a Merlin<\/strong>, chasing a Goldfinch. The Goldfinch managed to escape into some nearby bushes, much to the disappointment of the exhausted Merlin. This was like a scene from BBC\u2019s autumn watch, which as it happens has just started showing on the tele again. There were no sign of any Pink feet.<\/p>\n Next stop was the short drive to Budle Bay. In some nearby fields not far from the bay we watched 100+ Barnacle Geese<\/strong>, with dozens of Greylag and 7+ Pink Feet.<\/p>\n On Budle Bay there was another Little Egret<\/strong> and 4 Whooper Swans<\/strong>, all asleep on the mud. Other birds present included 100+ Wigeon, 50+ Mallard, 200+ Shelduck and a great selection of coastal waders.<\/p>\n Finally at Stag Rocks we were very lucky to find a flock of 16 Snow Buntings<\/strong> flying restlessly as the rocks etc. were busy with lots of people and dogs today.<\/p>\n P Buskin, MP Frankis, J Dobinson & A Swan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Holy Island was fresh and windy today. The harbour was quiet apart from some Eider, Shag and R B Merganser. At the Lough a selection of Ducks could be seen, which were mostly sheltering from the wind in the reeds. These included 10+ Teal, 20+ Mallard, 6+ Wigeon, a single female Tuftie and a pair […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[33,32,36,35,30,34,31,37],"class_list":{"0":"post-2679","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-barnacle-goose","8":"tag-brent-goose","9":"tag-budle-bay","10":"tag-holy-island","11":"tag-little-egret","12":"tag-merlin","13":"tag-snow-bunting","14":"tag-stag-rocks"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ntbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2679","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ntbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2679"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ntbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2718,"href":"https:\/\/www.ntbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2679\/revisions\/2718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ntbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ntbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ntbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}