Happy new year all. \u00a0Thought we would start 2013 at East Chevington. \u00a0Excellent decision as one of first birds seen this year was a Bittern flying 20 feet over car as we came in on entrance track. It flew over the viewpoint heading towards S pool. When we parked Janet as always was quicker out of the car and had two Bitterns in flight in the same area. A possibility of 3 birds but probably more likely the same two that have been seen since November. North Pool also proved fruitful as the redhead Smew was at the far north end with the Long-tailed Duck plus the Slavonian Grebe near the islands.<\/p>\n
On to \u00a0Cresswell Pond and excellent close views of the drake Long-tailed Duck with the female also present still. \u00a0Little else of note apart from male & 3 female Red-breasted Mergansers. The Pinkfeet flock was viewable at East Chevington & between Cresswell and Druridge with approximately 1500 present.<\/p>\n
Quick sea watch from Snab Point with only one Guillemot & a Red-throated Diver. \u00a0Then stopped at the old windmill at Woodhorn and views of the adult Greenland White-fronted Goose with a few Greylag seen from the gate. On to Newbiggin and a rather sad lunch at a cafe where the mince appeared to be mostly thick gravy. At Church Point the tide was coming in and a fine collection of waders with 20 Grey Plover, two Purple Sandpiper & 120 Dunlin amongst other common species. At least four adult Meditteranean Gulls on beach.Stopped at QE II CP with only four Pochard of note (numbers drastically declined in recent years). Finally Bothal Pond was very quiet with a quick search through the Canada Goose flock not revealing anything untoward.<\/p>\n
TR&J Dean<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Happy new year all. \u00a0Thought we would start 2013 at East Chevington. \u00a0Excellent decision as one of first birds seen this year was a Bittern flying 20 feet over car as we came in on entrance track. It flew over the viewpoint heading towards S pool. When we parked Janet as always was quicker out […]<\/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-48","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\/48","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=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.ntbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2928,"href":"https:\/\/www.ntbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions\/2928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ntbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ntbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ntbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}