Hauxley Nature Reserve, Northumberland

Sanderling 90
Dunlin 10
Turnstone 10 (some in summer plumage)

Sanderling and turnstones.

Coquet Island. This is one of the last places in the UK for breeding roseate terns.

There's some really interesting stuff going on, on the beach at Hauxley. As you can see in this photo, there are three layers. The sand dunes are apparently on top of an ancient peat bog, which is itself on top of clay. In this photo you can see part of a tree which has been preserved in the peat. I wonder how old it is? Well, at least old enough for about 30cm of peat to have accumulated over it (at the rate of about 1mm per year) and then for a sand dune to have formed over the peat. And how long has the sand dune been there?

Druridge Bay, Northumberland

Wood sandpiper 1
Greenshank 1
Common Sandpiper 2
Snipe 1

Wood sandpiper, one of 19 species of wader I saw today.

This swallow was nesting inside the hide, and seemed quite unconcerned by all of the birders coming and going.

Wall brown.

Dunnottar Castle, Stonehaven

Dunnottar Castle is just a couple of miles down the road from Stonehaven, and it was a lovely evening, so I decided to try my luck with a seawatch. I was pleased to find a great skua sitting on the sea, and about 20 gannets passed by, but nothing else except kittiwakes and fulmars around the cliffs. It was a similar story at Blackdog earlier in the week, very little on the sea (except of course scoter and eider at Blackdog!). This has been a surprise to me. With huge gannet colonies to the north in Shetland and much closer at Peterhead, and to the south at the Bass Rock, I expected to see hundreds of gannets at sea. Still, it was a nice to visit such a spectacular location.

 
Dunnottar Castle.



I found a lovely patch of devil's-bit scabious growing on the cliff opposite the castle. The castle may look close in these next photos, but in reality there's a bay and two 100ft cliffs in between!

The scabious attracted a lot of insects, including lots of small tortoiseshells.....

.....and this painted lady, one of the few I've seen this year so far.

A few plants from North East Scotland

Hard to believe perhaps, but this is an orchid, possibly the most overlooked orchid in the UK. It's lesser twayblade. This is a full grown plant which has finished flowering, hence the need for me to hold up it's flower stem! It's not particularly rare, but it's not common either, but it is very much overlooked and it's only about the fourth time I've managed to find it. I counted about 20 altogether in this area. The only other places I've seen it are Ben Lawers and Loch Morlich woods, so this site is in good company!

Lesser twayblade.

Another unassuming plant which unfortunately has also finished  flowering, this is chickweed-wintergreen. It's really a woodland species, but like wood anemone, it's often found on moors as a relic from the past. It's mainly a Scottish species but is also found much more rarely in England.

Crowberry.

Molinia caerulea showing why it goes by the English name of purple moorgrass. It's not always this purple though, in fact I would say that it's more often green, and indeed all of the green stuff you can see around it is also purple moorgrass! The flower however is always purple.

Girdle Ness, Aberdeen

Swallow nest.

Poa trivialis Rough meadow grass in full flower.

Goosanders.

Aberdeen harbour.

North East Scotland

Crossbill 2 flew over calling twice
Spotted flycatcher family party
Cuckoo 1 juvenile
Whinchat 1 juvenile
Wheatear 1 juvenile

Juvenile cuckoo

Spahgnum capillifolium

Sphagnum papillosum.

Sphagnum papillosum

Roseate Tern, Ythan Estuary, Aberdeenshire

Roseate tern 1 adult
Little tern 5
Arctic tern 50
Sandwich tern 50
Common terns
Knot 30
Eider 300

Year: 270 (Roseate tern)

The majority of the day was spent in pouring rain on the midge infested moors of Aberdeenshire, so it was with much relief that after work I headed up to the Ythan estuary just north of Aberdeen, almost as if an attempt to cleanse myself of the discomfort I had experienced earlier in the day. It worked, the evening sunshine lit up the sands and it was a beautiful end to the day.

This may be called an estuary, but a saltmarsh it isn't, in fact the river enters the sea through a dune system, and it's a very beautiful place. I knew that a roseate tern had been reported yesterday, but I didn't really expect to see it, so it was with some surprise that we picked it up almost immediately on the far side of the estuary sitting amongst a nice selection of commoner terns. Then, just as the sun started to break through, it flew towards us and landed on a sand bank at fairly close range. A beautiful adult.

Like quail last Sunday, this was a species I thought I'd missed for the year, so it was good to get it, almost at the last minute. A real unexpected bonus. No sign of the regular king eider which frequents this spot, but I've already seen one this year, and who wants to see an eclipse king eider anyway???

Common tern (left), roseate tern (second left) and Sandwich tern (right).

Grey seals.

Rainbow over the Ythan.

Loch Balgavies, Angus

Ospreys breed at Loch Balgavies. Two chicks have recently fledged, but the family is still hanging around the loch, the adults feeding up ready to migrate, the youngsters practising their flying and fishing. The flying bird in this photo is a youngster, the perched bird is the adult male.

The juvenile.

The Ospreys nest on the island. You can just see the adult on top of the dead tree on the right. The nest is in the next tree on the left. It makes a change to be at an Osprey site where you're trusted to be with 250m of the nest, rather than the more usual 1.5 miles, or in the case of the Bassenthwaite nest, what seems like 3 miles.

Montrose Basin, Angus

Osprey 1
Arctic Tern 50
Common Tern 50
Greenshank 1

This was my first ever visit to the Montrose Basin and I found it a really impressive place. Almost the first bird I saw was an Osprey fishing, surrounded by harassing terns. You know how they say that the Queen must think that the whole World smells of paint, well it occurs to me that Ospreys must think that the whole World is full of screaming terns and gulls.....

 

A moorland in North East Scotland

Goshawk 1 adult male
Red Kite 1
Grasshopper Warbler 1 reeling
Siskin 5
Tree Pipit 1 over

Dragonflies: Common Hawkers, Black Darters

Reptiles: 2 Common Lizards

Common Hawker. You can even see the yellow leading edge to the forewing. Photographing flying dragonflies is fraught with difficulties. It's not so much that they're fast moving, though of course they can be, but it's more a case of the camera focusing on the background rather than the insect. Manual focus is definitely the order of the day, but even that's not easy. By the time you've focused, the inconsiderate thing's moved.

Stonehaven

Stonehaven harbour. It's a real seaside place, with lots of gulls flying around calling, but also loads of Swifts screaming overhead. It's strange, I always associate screaming swifts with Scotland, it never seems to happen as much in England, or at least I don't notice it. A hundred or so birds circling around, chasing each other and screaming.