Druridge, going the extra mile. Thursday.

You don't actually have to go that extra mile i refer to, more like an extra eight hundred and eighty yards or so. Those extra four furlongs ( Grand National theme there! ) brought me a nice selection of waders and while none were rare the mud around the three flashes had caught the eye of fifteen Redshank, thirty four Lapwing, fifteen Ringed Plover and thirty two Curlew with twenty Pied Wagtail on the periphery. I had parked up at Druridge Pools and decided to have a walk up to East Chevington and after leaving the turning circle at the end of the road i headed through the first of the cow grazing areas with the large trailer to my left. Through the second gate next to the double ended timber finger post then on to the tarmac track, having negotiated the herd of cows, and there on the left in the farmers fields is the area i refer to. Worth keeping an eye on over the next few months if you are up that way. If you come up short there is always the dunes on the opposite side of the track which held the expected Goldfinches but instead of one large flock consisted of smaller groups scattered around. The farmers field further on had more Lapwing and Curlew and a single Short-eared Owl that quickly disappeared when a couple of Crows started mobbing it.
East Chevington was relatively quiet with four Goldeneye the standout species, that was until a female Marsh Harrier lifted from the reeds not thirty metres away. I had a very brief sighting of a Barn Owl as i walked up to the hide at Cresswell for the last thirty minutes of daylight. I could also see numbers of birds coming into roost at the site and counted the following on the sand bar just before i left.
113 Curlew, 26 Turnstone, 45 Redshank, 27 Oystercatchers, 3 Sanderling, 2 Shelduck, 3 Dunlin, a Lapwing and a Snipe. There was a Snipe in front of the hide also.