Back in the north...

This weekend I'm back at home from UEA, so today me and my dad decided to have a full day's birding on the coast. We chose (perhaps wrongly!) not to start in the Druridge area, and instead head north to look for seabirds.

Stag Rocks was quiet with just a single Great Northern Diver offshore and then a Red-necked Grebe just before we left. Budle Bay and Fenham-le-Moor were both busy with birds although we couldn't find anything out of the ordinary.

We continued north, ending up at Cheswick. Here we quickly picked up the drake Black Scoter, while a single drake Long-tailed Duck and a group of six Velvet Scoters were nice to see.

On the way back home we called in at Cresswell Pond to take a look at the smart juvenile/1st-winter Long-billed Dowitcher found earlier in the day. We had decent scope views of the bird but unfortunately it didn't land on the mud in front of the hide. The pond had a good selection of other birds too including a Little Stint, 4 Long-tailed Ducks, 5 Scaup and 5 Ruff.

Tomorrow I'll be heading back to uni and I hope to round up any bird sightings I have while there on my blog soon...

Black Scoter

Distant Long-billed Dowitcher at Cresswell - please view at 1080p

A successful day...

With a couple of reports of Black Guillemot at Cheswick last week, we decided that we would target catching up with one today as it was easily the commonest bird missing from our county list.

While the light wasn't great first thing, we gave it an hour or two on Holy Island. There was no sign of yesterday's Shore Larks but a Snow Bunting flew over and we did see 18 Twite and a Short-eared Owl.

Next we did head to Cheswick and parked by the railway bridge. We walked through the dunes and started scanning the sea, and it wasn't long before my dad did pick up a first-winter Black Guillemot about half way out. We watched it for a while, but once it started diving it was really difficult to get onto again.

Having not seen one (it?) for seven years, we also hoped to see the drake Black Scoter while we were here. As we walked north, we noticed a small group scoter just off Cheswick Black Rocks. Setting up the scope revealed the Black Scoter with some female Commons. We enjoyed some really good views of this bird - much better than we were expecting.

Other birds off Cheswick included a Great Northern Diver, Long-tailed Duck, Red-breasted Mergansers and a Goosander. 

Black Scoter - with female Common Scoters

Black Guillemot obviously!