Red-Throated Diver in Amble Marina

There has been a long-staying Red-throated Diver in summer plumage at Amble in Northumberland recently and as it looked to be staying for a while more I decided to go for it today.  I made the three and a half drive from Manchester to the free car park at Amble Braid and after a walking only a couple of hundred yards there it was, happily sleeping in the marina.

I've seen plenty of these birds before both on the sea and sometimes inland but usually in their winter plumage when they don't have the red throat and are mainly grey and white.  So to see one so close in summer plumage was a real real treat.

Apart from the very obvious red throat, I particular like the striping on the back of the head and neck as well as the red eye.

This bird did spend a lot of time asleep or partially asleep and drifting with the flow of water in the marina.  When it did awake it set off fishing amongst the boats and I lost it for a while.  So I left it for a while and had a walk around Amble Harbour, a place I really like. There were the usual Eider ducks and various Gulls in the harbour area and one or two Terns diving for fish, but nothing to keep me there too long.

I returned to find the Diver asleep again but back out in the open. As I was staying in Ashington tonight, which is only 20 minutes from Amble, I could spend as long as it took to get some more photos.  The bird eventually did awake and as the tide was rising and filling the marina, it came pretty close at times.

Red-Throated Diver at Watergrove Reservoir in Rochdale

 

This long-staying seabird gave me the runaround for five hours and never once came close, preferring to stay way out in the middle where the water is deepest. It's funny how the bird always seems closer on the other side of a lake or reservoir, but when you get there it's either just as far away or it's disappeared altogether. That's what happened here. Indeed it went missing somewhere for an hour or so around lunchtime before I finally relocated it.

This was my second visit to Watergrove to get a rare Greater Manchester Life Tick and I was so glad to see it because on my first visit it wasn't here, having flown over to Hollingworth Lake a few miles away. And to my annoyance when I got home it was reported back here on Watergrove Reservoir only an hour later.

Although I've year listed a few times in the past, I only keep two lists nowadays: My UK Life list which is approaching 300 birds and my Greater Manchester Life List which is nearly 200 birds. There's a notional virtual club called the GM 200 Club which I hope to be a member of in the near future, so you can see why it was important that I went for this one. 

I have three aims when I go out on a trip like this: 

1) To see the bird visually

2) To get a record shot

3) To get a decent photo

Well, two out of three ain't bad.

Day 2 - Frenchman's Bay, South Tyneside

South Gare and Coatham Beach

Here's the best of the rest from my visit to see the Pomarine Skua at South Gare near Redcar.  Most of these shots were taken from Coatham Beach on the southern side of the breakwater.

Dunlin flock

Juvenile Curlew Sandpiper

Common Tern feeding young on the sea

Guillemot

Kittiwake

Turnstone

Bar-tailed Godwit

Juvenile Common Tern

Red-throated Diver

Red-throated Diver

Turnstone

Tees River Pilot

Atlantic Grey Seal

Dumfries and Galloway Trip - Day 3a

Day 3 on my mini-birding trip to Dumfries and Galloway saw me venturing to the west-coast of the Rhins of Galloway to the pretty little harbour town of Portpatrick.  Ever since my first visit to this wonderful part of southern Scotland I have been wanting to see the famous Black Guillemots or Tysties which are well-known for nesting in the harbour walls here, and today didn't disappoint although the light could have been better.

I took a cross country route through some marvellous scenery for my journey and I briefly stopped at an ancient stone circle known as Torhouse before arriving at Portpatrick.

I spotted a distant bird in the harbour mouth almost as soon as I got out of the van and so I hurried up to the lighthouse end of the harbour to discover it was a Cormorant.  But after only a few minutes two or three Black Guillemots flew low over the water from the open sea before landing in the harbour proper and I immediately realised I was at the wrong end!

So I turned my binoculars on the open sea to look for Divers and was amazed to find a distant but definite Red-Throated Diver almost immediately. I went up to the top car park to get a photo and here I met another motorhome owner and his wife. They were a very nice couple and I chatted with them for some time about where they'd come from (Motherwell) and whether it was possible to overnight here and other such motorhome talk.

After this I went back to the van, picked up my tripod and headed off to the north end of the harbour where most of the Black Guillemots had congregated.  The harbour echoed with their calls and many were sitting inside holes in the harbour wall where they will eventually nest.

I spent a good two or three hours here trying to get flight shots of the birds coming from the sea and up to their nest holes, but the light really wasn't good enough to get the detailed shots I wanted.  However it is a place to which I will return on a sunny day because the potential is enormous.

As well as the Tysties there were also Pigeons and Jackdaws nesting in the harbour walls and I managed some slightly better shots of these birds when the sun put in a very brief appearance.

Red-throated Diver at Fairhaven Lake

I'm still more or less 'birding from the car' and so today I returned to Fairhaven Lake at Lytham in Lancashire.  You may remember from my previous post about the Great Grey Shrike and Drake Scaup (ha-ha, as if) that I spent quite a lot of time here as a child because my Grandad used to live only half a mile away in the Ansdell area of Lytham.  I occasionally used to stay with him over the summer holidays and he would sometimes take me crown green bowling at the club where he as a member. Anyway, I digress ...

Birdguides and the North West Birding Facebook group were showing that a Red-throated Diver was present on the lake, and as it's such a great place to get good photographs without having to walk more than a few hundred yards from the car, I decided to go for it today.

More of a report will follow later, but for now here are some of the best photographs I took: