Autumn hasn't really got going

It's been a month since my last blog.

In my defence,  I have been on holiday. We had ten days away in late September to Lincolnshire, Norfolk  and Suffolk. We finally managed to connect with the black-browed albatross at Bempton on our way south and called in for the long-staying White-tailed Lapwing at Blacktoft. 

Black-browed Albatross at Bempton

White-tailed Lapwing at Blacktoft

Norfolk and Suffolk were quiet bird-wise. It's great to see hobby everyday and great egrets are everywhere (both still description species in Northumberland). As the birding was so quiet, we concentrated more on invertebrates. The wonderful Suffolk Wildlife Trust Reserve - Carlton Marshes, didn't disappoint. We saw fen raft spider and three species of Bush Cricket there.

Roesel's Bush-Cricket

Short-winged conehead

We also watched a little egret catching migrant hawker dragonflies on the wing- who'd have thought that 20 years ago.

Little egret hunting dragonflies

At Waxham, we went to successfully twitch vagrant emperor dragonflies and also saw wasp spider - bonus! I like Suffolk. There's lots of interesting things that we don't see up here (yet). 

Wasp spider

Back on the patch it's been quiet though. With the wind mostly from the west, there's been no falls of birds and common passage migrants have been absent. My chances of redstart, pied or spotted flycatchers or garden warbler are now very slim. With the forecast saying westerlies for at least another week, a vagrant American bird could be more likely than a yellow-browed warbler. Speaking of which, yesterday, I went to twitch the red-eyed vireo on Holy Island - a new world-bird for me.

Since coming back from holiday I've added pectoral sandpiper (28th Sept), greenfinch (4th October) and a brambling to my patch list (yesterday - a fly over in-off) which takes me to 160 for the year.