Newton Pool...

It was a really nice evening on Friday (22nd) so I decided to head up to Low Newton for a walk. I have been to Low Newton once before but this I wanted to check out the scrapes that are talked about quite a bit in this blog HERE by a local birder from Beadnell.

I parked at the top of the hill and made my way down to the village square. It was pretty busy with people going for a stroll along the beach and to the local pub. There were plenty of Swallows and House Martins flying around the buildings and a handful of Swifts.

The scrapes are literally the first field behind the village. There were plenty of Black-headed Gulls and Mallard to be seen and a large group of Starlings flying around before they roosted in the reed bed adjacent to the scrapes. It was nice to stand and watched them for a few minutes.

There were also plenty of Linnets about with a few males singing from the fence posts and Reed Buntings darted about overhead. There wasn't much happening on the scrape so I carried on around the corner to Newton Pool and the hide there spotted a couple of juvenile Goldfinches on the way. Again plenty of Mallard but not a lot else unfortunately. I spent an hour or so in the hide but it was fairly unproductive.

Views of the scrapes.

I was starting to lose light now so I headed back but there were still plenty of Meadow Brown butterflies in the long grass to be seen.

As I made it back to the scrapes I had once last check all the way around when I noticed three ducks at the back of the water up-ending and feeding. I could tell straight away they were Shoveler a bird I hadn't seen this year or since I was last down in Northumberland in October 2011.

Distant poor quality shot in low light.

A check of my list year shows that Shoveler puts me up to 122 which equals last years total already. I then compared species seen with last year and I have not seen 21 species this year that I did last year which means I have seen 21 new birds this year. Some that I am missing I definately will not see but some I should really have seen already including Jay, Puffin, Snipe, Woodcock, Golden plover and Artic tern amongst others. I probably have seen Arctics down here but not close enough to confidently ID. In theory I only have a month or so to improve by British year list because the rest of the year will be spent in Finland. But to be honest they are only lists which don't mean much and I still just enjoy going out and seeing what turns up.