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Saturday 20 February 2010

GIVING IN TO TEMPTATION...................


Giving in to temptation in the form of Waxwings , I was determined to find my own and as such have a few places staked out, as there is not many berries around it can only be a matter time , checked the housing estate, and walking past the stream a Redshank flushed and landed on the fence of someones back garden and all I could think of was ,wow what a great garden tick that would be !!!!!!!!!. So having failed to find my Waxwings I headed to Ashington what better day than today as the sun was blazing, anyway they came in and out a few times and I got a few shots , I then wandered to where they where going after feeding on berries , it was the tallest tree around an ASH some few hundred yards away and I wondered if they where splitting up to feed but returning to the tree to re group, my theory is they split into smaller and smaller groups dictated by the amount of food ,not an earth shattering revelation I know , but there could be more birds around than first thought.
Headed to Cresswell to check out the geese they where a long way off so I headed over to the dunes and scoped the sea , the light was fantastic and picked out several Red-throated divers ,but there was a rolling swell and birds just disappeared, a Great Northern Diver flew south fairly close to shore but just went on past Cresswell.
A Microlight spooked all the geese and they re-settled near Bells farm so I headed over to check them out , the light not great as partly looking into it, some 2000-2500 birds in two flocks the nearer had , 3 Barnacle & 2 Brent, but I could not pick out any Bean Geese , although there have been Bean seen :). Nice to have a sunny day I ended back at Cresswell in the hope of Barn Owl, but no luck, at least it is still around.





My garden Rowan is laden with berries every year but totally stripped by end August , so how these are still here beats me, mine is native not sure if this is,or a more ornamental variety .

5 comments:

Ipin said...

It looks like Sorbus aucuparia 'josephs rock' our native birds always leave the orange fruited rowans til second last and realy dodge the white sorbus... bit like snowberry and sea buckthorn.

Northumbrian Birding said...

Cheers Ian ,nicely put, I am watching a laden white sorbus for Waxwings which have fed on them in the past.
Brian

Sarah G said...

I love waxwings; I took one in as a juvenile and it was the easiest to care for. He was later released.
Beautiful birds. When they come around my house they eat the Mountain Ash berries. We also fed him flies and apple bits and the likes. Very simple birds.

Northumbrian Birding said...

Hi Sarah, Fascinating story,there was an article showing Waxwings feeding on apples that where pushed onto sticks and held by hand. If you see any this year you should give it try.
Brian

Sarah G said...

I think taking care of the juvenile was a once in a lifetime thing. I don't see waxwings as much as I should anymore. I was pretty young when I took him in, too... About 8 or so.It wasn't very hard for me to take care of him and he was very friendly.