Black-headed gull, moorhen, mallard and Canada goose at Thornes Park duck pond this morning.
Canada Goose
Category: Water
Grebe, Gull and Heron
After recent heavy rain Newmillerdam is cloudy and khaki. A great-crested grebe pops up just yards from my table at the water’s edge at the Boathouse Cafe with a small silvery fish in its bill.
Down by the outlet a heron is watching, waiting and stalking its prey, so intent on fishing that it allows me to rest my iPhone on the railings just 10 yards away from it to take this photograph.
Curlews and Tree Sparrows
Curlews and tree sparrows at the Northumberland Wildlife Trust’s Hauxley nature reserve last week.
And some grazing teal from our return journey via RSPB Saltholme reserve.
Saltholme Pools
On Wednesday morning the farmer was moving the cattle that graze the marshes at RSPB Saltholme from Paddy’s Pool over to the Saltholme Pools.
Cormorants, Crows and Coffee
Boathouse Cafe, Newmillerdam, 11.20am, hazy sky alto-stratus, a few small spots of drizzle in a coolish breeze
A gulls gets the better of a crow, which stops to preen on the ridge tiles of the boathouse roof.
A juvenile cormorant – brown with a light breast – splashes its wings as it makes its way down the lake in what I presume is some kind of preening routine. It then takes off, skimming low over the water to join seven adult cormorants on their favourite resting place, the boughs of a half-submerged fallen tree.
Mugged for a Mussel
The waters of Newmillerdam were rippling tranquilly in the autumnal morning light yesterday, so hypnotically that one toddler was standing transfixed.
‘He’s fascinated by the water,’ his mother explained to Barbara. The child, oriental and completely bald, like a young version of the Dalai Lama, who is traditionally chosen by senior monks who meditate at Lhamo La-Tso, an oracle lake in central Tibet.
Not so tranquil were the black-headed gulls mugging the tufted ducks to steal the freshwater mussels they were diving for. At first I saw a gull touch down on a duck’s back, swooping in from behind, but the duck immediately dived out of reach. Next two gulls were diving on a pair of tufted ducks which had just surface and I saw that one gulls managed to grab an acorn-sized object which was probably a small freshwater mussel.
Grandma’s Swan Prints
Back to a bit of tranquility: I spotted these Victorian chromolithographs at the Drift Cafe at Cresswell, Druridge Bay. They’re so like the pair that my Grandma Bell had hanging in her cottage, and later bungalow, at Sutton-cum-Lound that I feel they must be from the same edition. When grandma died in the late 1970s my cousin Janet took them, and grandma’s dark-wood dresser to her flat in Poplar, East London. It was strange to see them in their new surroundings.
The canal below Hartley Bank, with the birches coming into their autumn colours reminded me of the tranquil atmosphere of grandma’s pictures.
Halfway Plumage
Up on the balcony at the Boathouse café with a panorama of the lower end of the lake at Newmillerdam on a fine autumn morning with black-headed gulls swooshing by was like being on a mini cruise, especially when accompanied by a pumpkin latte (well, you’ve got to try it once at this time of year).
There were 25 tufted ducks in a scattered group, mostly just resting, although I did see one tackling a medium-sized freshwater mussel.
Many of the gulls were in halfway, teenage, plumage with a shallow inverted ‘V’ on each wing.
The three cygnets of the resident mute swan family were at that halfway stage too, with bands of brown on wings and across the tail covets.
The lone great-crested grebe was probably one of this year’s young, or possibly an adult moulting into dull winter plumage.
Hauxley
Another sketchbook page from our short break in Northumberland and it’s another view from a table in a cafe overlooking a lagoon in a restored landscape, this time at the Lookout Café at the Hauxley Wildlife Discovery Centre at the northern end of Druridge Bay.
Red admiral and speckled wood butterflies rested on willow and bramble in the afternoon sun in a sheltered corner at the foot of the wooded slope below the Wildlife Discovery Centre.
Link
Saltholme
We took a break at the RSPB Saltholme wetlands reserve on our way to, and back from, Northumberland last week. The panoramic windows of the first floor cafe look out over one of the lagoons, so we were watching dunlin, godwits and gadwall as we ate our lunch.
On the return journey the birding highlight was a pectoral sandpiper a migrant that was a long way off course as it headed south as it breeds in Arctic Canada.
To the south east Roseberry Topping makes a craggy a punctuation in the looming bulk of the North York Moors.
Roe Deer Rutting
On our way north along the M1 near Garforth we glimpsed two roe deer standing facing each other in a large stubble field. As we drove by they clashed antlers (10.20 a.m., 15 September).
Cutting Back
It got a bit neglected during the heatwave but now’s a good time to strim back the vegetation around the pond and trim the hawthorn hedges.
I had a near miss as I strimmed around the pond when I disturbed a large frog, but fortunately it hopped away unharmed. I’ve left a fringe of vegetation around the edges of the pond.