Great to be back on the home turf for a week or so. As usual mostly family stuff but managed an hour out and about most days. I didn't bother taking my "real" camera but my latest "point and pray" superzoom proved useful in the field again as well as for the standard holiday snaps:)
A visit to Low Hedgley near Wooler to get my Dad out for a breath of fresh air gave a bunch of Northumberland regulars - many of which would have caused some excitement back home - good numbers of Gadwall snadderand and Little Grebe dvergdykker to name a couple.
I managed wader counts over the same stretch of beach that I covered during my formative birding years. The number of people present at times defied belief - and on 01 January I don't think I have ever seen so many people on the beach even in summer. The poor waders have nowhere to go....
Numbers of Purple Sandpiper fjæreplytt were just under 100 birds - quite normal for the numbers of this species to vary a lot year on year at Stag Rocks. Oystercatcher tjeld, Redshank rødstilk and Turnstone steinvender numbers were, however, all rather low compared to previous levels.
Nice to see several hundred Common Scoter svartand offshore.
A few thousand Pinkfeet kortnebbgås, a small flock of Brent Geese ringgås, 60+ Shoveler skjeand and hundreds of other wildfowl and waders were seen during a short stop at Budle Bay. To think there was a point in my life when I thought there wasn't much going on in the area.
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