Gripped

I've not spent much time at Druridge this weekend....

On Friday morning, I had a couple of hours pre-work birding. It was a pretty miserable morning and there were few birds about. I tramped the beach and other likely snow bunting habitat with no success.

On Saturday it was too windy to put the nets up,  we were just about to head to Druridge when the RBA Mega alert went off...it's bound to be in Cornwall we thought... Probable GreaterYellowlegs, East Chevington... quickly followed by a call from Blakey to confirm it. When we got there it had just flown onto south pool, with no visible edge. It was spotted flying back onto the north pool and we were soon enjoying great views of it on the edge of the pool. Superb!

A County and Western Pally tick for me.

Whilst we were watching the yellowlegs, I got a message from Choppington's finest wildlife guide, to tell me he had just seen a nuthatch at Druridge...GRIPPED! Nuthatch would be a patch-tick for me. MSK wasn't as keen to gloat when I told him what we were watching!

Would I swap a greater yellowlegs at East Chev for a nuthatch at Druridge? Probably not.....

To wet to ring today and probably just as well, as one of the ringing team had too much to drink the previous night and for once, it wasn't me!!! We had a wander around Lynemouth Sewage Works in the mizzle. We need to find a way to catch pied wags, there were 18-20 on the filter beds (nice!). As we checked out potential net rides, a few blackbirds and robins moved through as well as a blackcap. Lynemouth is really hard to bird as the willow is so dense, I think ringing will be the only way to reveal what is really lurking in there.

Hopefully, if the weather behaves, we'll be ringing there tomorrow morning.