Curlew
To celebrate our recent 25th wedding anniversary, we decided to take a short break in Northumberland, staying in a log cabin near Alnwick. The weather wasn't to bad and we were able to get out to Lindisfarne, along the coast including Budle Bay, Bamburgh, Seahouses, Craster and Alnmouth. Unfortunately, the tides were challenging requiring scopes to view the distant birds and not a lot of photographic opportunities. However, it was great to be out in the fresh air, enjoying places we had not visited in five years. I was able to achieve my years aim of 200 birds, year ticking Brent Geese (pale and dark breasted), Spotted Redshank and Arctic Tern.
One of my favourite waders is the Curlew, both sight and sound and we were not disappointed to see them in good numbers
Eider Ducks or "Cuddy" Ducks (as I like to call them) are another favourite but again, due to tides when birding, failed to come close!
Just outside Seahouses, four Whooper Swans lingered in the fields next to a large pond
And Meadow Pipit
Starlings are very overlooked, but can be very well marked, as is this one that came down to wait for scraps as we ate our lunch of crab sandwiches in Craster!
On a cold, crisp, frosty or snowy morning, this Robin would have looked outstanding!
There can only be two people who have not seen a live whale of any species in UK waters, that is me and a remote cave dwelling Peruvian holy man! Joking aside, it was sad to see the remains of this Humpback Whale at Dunstanburgh
Dr Dolphin posted on Facebook
"We've noticed that emotions have been running high elsewhere during discussion about the Humpback Whale that beached at Dunstanburgh so commenting will be disabled for this post but here's a summary of the events of the last couple of weeks.
On Sunday 15th September an injured and obviously distressed Humpback Whale, showing signs of previous entanglement, was found 3nm east of the Tyne. The same animal was then seen off Flamborough on Monday 16th and as far as we're aware hasn't been seen since that evening.
On Tuesday 17th a dead Humpback was found floating off Whitley Bay. It was still there until the evening of Wednesday 18th. Drone images, and some very good (unpublished) images of that whale showed that it wasn't the injured whale seen previously. This same whale subsequently beached between Craster and Dunstanburgh on Sunday 22nd where it was identified as a 7.7m long male so probably ~10 months old. Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme- UK strandings carried out an examination on Tuesday 24th and found signs of entanglement.
What we now know about the dead whale is that it had been entangled sub-surface and hauled, already dead, by a local boat recovering their pots. It was released and subsequently became a postmortem surface entanglement off Whitley Bay. It was released from that entanglement and drifted before beaching at Dunstanburgh.
It wasn't entangled in ghost gear or abandoned gear, it was almost certainly a tragic accidental entanglement in active fishing gear. Our local fishing industry is a small community of generally small-scale fishing operations and I know from discussions over the last couple of weeks how upset they are by the death of this young Humpback and the condition of the injured whale off Tynemouth. Local fishermen have been supplying sightings data to the North East Cetacean Project since 2010 and their contribution to our knowledge of our marine wildlife is much appreciated. Local fishermen in the Forth provided a lot of information about the location of an entangled Humpback there last winter.
British Divers Marine Life Rescue have a Large Whale Disentanglement Team that they can mobilise when entangled animals are reported still alive. As you can imagine that's a potentially dangerous and difficult operation that BDMLR are funding to try and save entangled whales. If you see a whale that you think may be entangled, or whales/cetaceans stranded on the shore then please 'phone 01825 765546.
Many thanks to Mark for the image of the injured whale off Tynemouth and Alex for the image of the dead whale off Whitley Bay."
I had hoped to do some landscape images including white water (experimenting with fast and slow shutter speeds), but, alas, my landscape lens stayed in its bag (note to self - get your arse into gear)! I did, however take a couple of images with my 400mm prime lens
Bamburgh Castle from Lindisfarne
Lindisfarne Castle (not a real castle on an island that isn't really an island!
My sincere thanks to my lovely wife Heather for booking these excellent few days away!
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