A round up

I've had a very hectic weekend so much co that I am only getting around to updating the blog now. Yesterday I squeezed a visit to Druridge in between ringing at Gosforth park and going to see Ash at the Academy, who where excellent.

It was like proper spring at Gosforth Park with 2 or 3 grasshopper warblers reeling (we caught one), lots of sedge warblers and even a reed warbler.

Sedge warbler was back at Druridge yesterday and a fly over yellow wagtail was another year tick, six black-tailed godwits were on the Budge fields.

I called in for a couple of hours on my way back from work this evening too and I am pleased I did, at first it was looking very quiet indeed, these two black-wits at either end of the attractiveness scale didn't even bother to wake up!

I checked the sea and photographed some of the wheatears along the road, this first shot of a female looks like the Greenland race leucorhoa which always come through Druridge later than ours, the male might even be of this race too?

So by the time I got to the Budge Screen I hadn't seen much, as I was scanning a chap from Yorkshire came by, he thought he had seen a grebe from the little hide but wasn't sure, I picked up his bird which turned out to be a redhead smew!

arse on, but the only sharpish pic I got

redhead smew with tufted duck

A bit late for smew I was thinking, it'a been a good year for them in the County and particularly at Druridge. These photo's are digi-scoped record shots.

On the field between the Budge fields and the hamlet there were no less than 10 yellow wagtails! I think this could be a record number for the patch, I scanned through them all but could only find flavissimas...

I'm planning to my fourth CBC visit tomorrow morning, here's hoping for gropper!

110 yellow wagtail

111 sedge warbler