The Year So Far

Just an assortment  of shots from the past few weeks been neglecting the blog of late partly due to the fact I have not had a decent run of pictures to include. January I concentrated on the Blyth Valley patch challenge to see how many birds could be seen in the are of Blyth Valley which roughly is from Blyth River to Holywell Dene to toughly just short of the A1 and as far out to sea as is visible but only for the month of January, I must say in the end I rather enjoyed it going to areas not usually visited  in the quest for the more elusive Marsh(no) & Willow Tit(yes) but rather than just trail around aimlessly I also surveyed sights that could be good for Dragonflies in the coming months of Summer and areas that perhaps had potential for any Spring wader passage , I ended up with 117species in the end which  obviously being on the coast was supplemented with Seawatch sightings, total in reality could have been much greater given the fact I did not see CANADA goose which you would have thought of as a given, I even went to anywhere I thought I would see them, and would have twitched one if I could ,how sad is that !!! , 

 Med Gull at Holywell Pond turns out to be a Polish Bird

 Digiscoped this Fox I like the fact he had no idea i was there

 Forgot I had this shot 2 little egrets on the Horton Burn

 And this Great Black  Backed Gull with the unusual wing pattern what will it mature in too

 I do have a soft spot for Yellowhammers this is one bird that reminds me of my childhood

 Little Egret on the small stream running into the River Blyth , the only bird I have ever seen on this part

 And this one on the Horton Burn late one afternoon

 Kingfisher also on the Horton Burn again late afternoon , it was only the water ripples that gave it away at first

 Goldeneye displaying on the River Blyth probably the sunshine set it off

 Lesser Redpolls  at Cramlington actually feeding amongst the shallow water

 Gadwall at Holywell Pond a species that seems to be thriving and one you had to go to Gosforth Park in the hope of seeing them some years ago , how things change !

Came across this Fungi at the base of a tree , to me it looks like it's upside down , the white coating was very hard and smooth , I put  a shot on twitter to see if It can be identified