Hard Graft

Not much to report this week. A couple of short visits to the patch produced little of note other than some rather smart summer-plumaged sanderlings on the beach.

Today I spent the morning at Druridge before the rain arrived. First I checked the Budge fields where a common sandpiper on the mud was year-tick, it was accompanied by a couple of juvenile dunlin, a few snipe and a handful of lapwing...oh and two yellow wagtails.

To the dunes - There was some kind of co-ordinated cetacean watch this weekend, which saw Neil and Andrea Anderson and Tom an Muriel Cadwallender spending most of the weekend sat at Snab Point slowly freezing to death. So I thought I would have a quick look in the Bay to see if there were dolphins and amazingly there was - a pod of bottlenose dolphins about half way out.

A call to Tom confirmed that they had already seen these beasts heading north passed Snab. The dolphins were very active, breaching regularly with some getting out of the water altogether, performing pirouettes. They swam pretty quickly north and were soon just specks heading towards Coquet Island.

Excitement over, I headed for the Little hide where the same common sandpiper or a different one was on the mud. Buzzards circled the far shelterbelt and a little owl was perched on the farm buildings.

I couldn't see much from the Oddie hide as the grass was so high in front of the shutters. Nothing else for it - I trooped back to the car and got my trusty grass-knife and went back to cut the grass. What seemed like a good idea at the start seemed less-good when I had only done about half the job and I had blisters on my hand and was knackered - not used to hard graft.

I persevered and eventually had the whole lot cut. I headed off, hand bleeding, to the Country Barn for a well-deserved pasty. I hope the photographers will thank me when the mega yank or eastern wader turns up this week.

Before

After

134 Common sandpiper