In the 8 days since I last posted a blog I have added 32 species to my Non-Motorised Transport bird list for the year (or as I am starting to think of it, my "Bike and Boots Birdlist").
The 2nd of January was very snowy so I just went for a walk around my local patch again and added Collared Dove, Grey Wagtail (feeding in amongst the floating raft of rubbish on Ormesby Beck - amazing where you can see birds), Redwing, Great Tit, Greenfinch and Chaffinch to the list, taking it to 31 species.
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| I had some lovely views of Redwings today, in really good light.Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of them so you'll have to make to with this not-so-good one that I took along Ormesby Beck in November last year. |
On Sunday the 3rd of January I was concentrating on plants, for the annual New Year Plant Hunt run by the BSBI (Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland). Consequently I didn't see any new birds for the year but did see 22 species of plant in flower in a short walk around North Ormesby.
Rain for the next three days meant that I didn't get out again until the Thursday (7th Jan), when another walk around the Middle Marsh area and down past Middlesbrough dock as far as the Transporter Bridge, yielded another 5 species for the list - Coal Tit, Siskin, Snipe, Peregrine and Wren. The Siskin was the first one that I have seen in the Middle Marsh/ Ormesby Beck area. The Peregrine is the fastest creature on earth, of any kind - when diving on prey they can reach 200 mph. The one I saw was flying at a much more sedate pace over Middlesbrough Dock towards the centre of town.
Today (Saturday the 9th of January) was a clear cold day so I decided to cycle, very carefully because of the frosty conditions, to the mouth of the River Tees at South Gare. I went via Coatham Marsh, Locke Park and the seafront in Redcar. It was a tiring day but well worth it for the 21 new additions to the list. Some of these were very common birds that I had somehow managed to miss in the first week of the year - notably House Sparrow, and Dunnock (the absence of these two up to now was starting to look a bit embarrassing) and also Tufted Duck, Gadwall, Grey Heron, and Canada Goose (all of which I saw in Locke Park along with lots of Mallards). Many, however, were birds that I needed a trip to the coast to have a chance of seeing. This group included waders such as Sanderling, Turnstone and Knot, and fully marine such as Common Eider and Shag (a smaller, more maritime version of the Cormorant) . One of my real target birds for the day was Snow Bunting and, unlike many other times I have looked for this species at South Gare, I was able to tick it off very easily, about five minutes after I'd locked my bike up. A flock of about 40 in the dunes gave me very nice views before flying off.
As I was walking back to the road after seeing the Snow Buntings I saw Nick Preston, one of the regular South Gare birders, hurrying towards me. I had seen him earlier and told him that I was doing an NMT list this year - now he was coming back specially to find me to tell me that there were 3 Great Northern Divers in the mouth of the river. I was bowled over by his kindness - I'm not really one of the 'South Gare crowd' and have only met Nick a few times before today. He took me (observing proper social distancing of course) nearly to the end of the Gare and I was able to get cracking, albeit brief, views of 2 Great Northerns. While we were there Nick also got me onto two Purple Sandpipers on the rocks which I would probably have missed otherwise.
If like me you were an avid reader of the Swallows & Amazons books by Arthur Ransome when you were young, you may have heard of the Great Northern Diver, even if you've never seen one. In the last book of that series, Great Northern?, a young birdwatcher, Dick Callum, discovers a nesting pair of Great Northerns on a remote Scottish island (at some point in the 1930s), where the books told him (and still tell us) that they don't nest. Wanting to be sure he has got the identification right, he seeks out a 'bird expert' that he has heard about, to ask his advice, not knowing, until it is too late that so-called expert is actually a notorious egg collector. The rest of the book sees Dick and his friends trying to foil the egg-collector's attempts to become the first person to add genuine British Great Northern Diver eggs to his collection.
Anyway, back to South Gare - after adding three more species (the aforementioned Shag, plus Reed Bunting and Skylark), I headed home. It was hard work cycling into the wind and avoiding the icy patches on the road. I wasn't expecting to see any more new birds but while taking a little rest next to a fairly busy road I heard several high pitched calls and looked up to see a Kingfisher shouting at me from a tree over a little stream that I hadn't even noticed was there. This took the NMT list to 57, and the total list for the day to (I think) 43.
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| Kingfishers can be tricky to get pictures of. This is the best one I've managed yet - taken on Ormesby Beck in November 2020 |
Those of you that like lists can read on. If you're not in that select group of humans, feel free to skip the last bit of this post 😊.
The new additions to the list up to today are:
2nd Jan
I am doing a list of all Flora and Fauna that I can identify. Only up to 41 including yellow brain fungus and tulip tree
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