Baltic on Teesside

Knot
Purple Sandpiper

Great Northern Diver
Med Gull - Newburn

Med Gull - Headland

Ringed Plover - Newburn

It was so cold today but lovely at the same time. We had a walk along Greatham Creek and sat for a while in the hide overlooking Seal Sands. There were lots of waders on the sands along with a Long Tailed Duck, Pintail and Female Smew. There was also a grebe which we think was a Black Necked but as it was a long way off we are not 100pc sure. At Newburn there were Ringed Plovers, Purple Sandpipers, Knot and Turnstones but we missed out on the Black Redstart. The Med Gull was on it's lamp post and there was also one on the Headland and the Great Northern Diver was in the Marina.

Black Saturday

Black Throated Thrush
Pirate Ship - Whitby

"Heres looking at you"

Herring Gull

Saturday turned out to be black in more ways than one. Firstly it finished off a bad week at school for Sylvia, the lens of her camera got broken whilst visiting Newholm to see the black throated thrush. The up side was that she did get to see the rare visitor but am not sure how much consolation that actually was!! Anyway we carried on to Whitby and managed to have a reasonable day there, she even bought next years Christmas Cards in the RNLI sale!!!!!!!!

And for all the children in Year 2 at Holy Trinity Rosehill Primary - the Pirates have arrived in Whitby, BEWARE next week!!

Back to Normal

Glaucous Gull

It was so good to get up early this morning and be able to go horse riding once again. Even though the school at the stables was totally thawed there was plenty of snow piled up around the edges to give the horses something to 'shy 'about.

I decided to have a trip to Saltburn on the way back to try and see the Glaucous Gull on the beach before Mick got to see it. He always seems to get the rare birds and I don't. I still have not been to see the Thrush near Whitby yet, I may go tomorrow as Mick is at work. Anyway the Glaucous Gull was there and very obliging although the same can't be said for the dog walkers whose dogs continually disturbed it, more than photographers ever could and the light was terrible, however I did manage to get a couple of shots.

Short-eared Owl

Short-eared Owl

After a very quiet walk around Bowesfield marsh (which was virtually devoid of birdlife), had a trip to RSPB Saltholme...........this was very quiet too. Tried Greatham Creek early afternoon, here we spotted 2 Short-eared Owls hunting and a Fox also hunting the same area! 36 Twite were also in the area ...................very quiet!!

Black-throated Thrush

Black-throated Thrush

Black Redstart

A trip over towards Newholm near Whitby today to try and locate the Black-throated Thrush, the roads over the moors were Ok and the side road down to the village were clear, (thanks to Col for driving us), the bird was fairly easily located in a residents front garden and the locals were very friendly. Excellent views were had of the bird (hope it manages to escape the clutches of the many cats in the village!!). From here we headed to Lockwood beck which was devoid of birdlife with the exception of a couple of Goldcrests which had managed to survive the Arctic conditions. We then headed to South Gare where we managed to see Snow Bunting, Skylark, Black Redstart and a Red-throated Diver, down the road at Coatham we saw a female Smew. Over the Transporter Bridge to North Gare where Twite and Stock Dove were there in big numbers......................then home to thaw out ............an excellent day.

Feed the Birds

Rook


Jackdaw

Starling

Although the weather might be nice to look at it must be awful for the poor birds and animals who can't find any food due to the ground being totally covered with the deep snow and the water being frozen. There have been reports on the Teesmouth Bird Club website (http://www.teesmouthbc.com/ - sightings) of skylarks sitting in the middle of roads and verges hardly able to fly away from oncoming traffic. Yesterday I fed the birds as usual and decided to clear a patch on grass in the centre of the close and put out some feed there to try to attract birds that don't usually come into the garden. It took a day but as the thaw continued there were rooks, jackdaws and the odd starling feeding on that seed today.

A New Year

Great Northern Diver

Tree Sparrow

Red Breasted Merganser

Hartlepool Marina

Kestrel

Meadow Pipit

Not going too far afield due to the weather so our trip to the Lakes was put on hold again due to the A66 being closed! A few photos taken over the past couple of days from around North Gare and Hartlepool Marina. It was a lovely day today and Sylvia was well annoyed at having to go back to school and not being able to go and enjoy the sun and snow.