Nice Birds and Broken Cameras

Friday morning and a lovely rainbow detracting that beautiful building known as the Dunston Rocket NOT.  Thankfully it will not blot our landscapes much longer when looking from the North side of the Tyne as I believe it is about to be demolished.

Not a great lot on the Tyne in the last few days apart from a Spotted Redshank for 2 days although its cousin the Not So Spotted Plain Redshank was around in ones or twos.  A number of Shelducks were seen mainly closer to Newcastle though and even the various Gulls were very low in numbers.

Heading up the Derwent early in the morning last week gave me some great views of the Adult Dippers with their young ones.  I wonder how long it takes before they start feeding themselves as articles I have read say up to 2 weeks before they become independent and I have been watching this family of 4 for 2 weeks now and they are definitely still being fed by the adults although they do tend to do a bit of foraging themselves but in very slow water and dont submerge

Up at Big Waters on Saturday and several Sedge Warblers were extremely vocal doing some good choral work just outside the hide.  Lesser Whitethroat were heard but not seen despite a good intense 30min search.

This gorgeous little thing wandered along the front of the freshly cut scrape and stayed there for nearly 10mins.  It appeared later also with a partner in the North Field

Managed a nice sort of silhouette shot of a Whitethroat which I cropped quite severly but think it still looks quite good specially with the blurring from the bits of foliage in front.

Then my birding was interrupted as I had to take Mr Nikon to the hospital as the SDHC Card was stuck.  The kind Doctor in Gosforth extracted it and as it is still under warranty I will send it back to the factory when I get the Junior Master Nikon back from the factory which I dispatched on Wednesday as it failed completely.  I then thought I would drop into Holywell before heading home and glad I did.  Bumped into a chap whilst walking in who told me there was a Little Stint on the East Pool but when I got there it had evolved into 2 Temminck's Stint.  A Lifer for me and a big thanks to Liverbirder for letting me use his Scope as I hadn't bothered to bring mine.