Tears......twice.

I remember watching the video of the slaughter of Amur Falcons with tears streaming down my face.
This report in National Geographic had the same effect............for totally different reasons.

Safe Passage For Amur Falcons Through India

Posted by Steve Boyes of National Geographic Expeditions in Explorers Journal on November 20, 2013

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Up until this year, an estimated 120,000 – 140,000 Amur falcons (Falco amurensis) were being slaughtered in a remote part of north-eastern India at this exact time each year. In 2012, Shashank Dalvi and Ramki Sreenivasan documented this shocking massacre as tens of thousands of migrating falcons congregate along the banks of the Doyang reservoir in Wokha district of Nagaland. Everyday thousands of beautiful Amur falcons were being caught in mist nets, plucked alive, skewered, and then smoked before transport to market for sale as a cheap source of protein. The global population of this record-breaking aviator and natural wonder would have been depleted had this slaughter in Nagaland been allowed to continue. This year no Amur falcons have been killed so far…

click HERE to read the rest of the article.
If you signed the petition congratulations, you might just have made some sort of a difference.
I will find myself sighning more e petitions from now on.

BANG BANG, you're dead !

Reading the many reports of Woodcock coming in off the North Sea and the exhausted condition many were in took me back to Saturday afternoon.
The Lesser Grey Shrike got the day off to a brilliant start and watching The Stringer and J. S. putting out mealworms, showing concern for the welfare of the bird, lifted the spirits even higher. A more sombre mood later after John and I had visited Amble for lunch with the Gulls and we called off near Hadston Carrs to view the beach. Just before we got there, in the fields as we approached, we noticed three small groups of people with guns and gundogs on the edge of the wooded area facing the sea. Driving along the beach road we passed another couple of guys, again with guns and dogs, this time on the other side of the woods. On getting out of the car we were greeted with a cacophony of sound from the woods as a large party of killers and their accomplices screamed and yelled as their dogs barked and yelped and their guns discharged. The sight of Woodcock and Pheasant frantically taking to the skies in all directions, some of them disappearing from view as they headed out to sea, was a pitiful sight. I couldn't have believed that my heart could have sunken so low in such a short period of time at the behaviour of us humans. My mind went immediately to the poor Badgers and what those poor creatures have been going through recently.
I felt sick to my stomach.

Central Library exhibition by............

......a very talented local artist ALAN MOULD and his friend BOB LAINE.

If you've been in Thornley Woodlands Centre or stood at the Sherburn Estate Red Kite Viewpoint you will have seen some of his work without knowing.

Here are a few examples of that work.

 

 

Artwork associated with Friends of the Red Kites.

 

 

A couple of examples from his "Twisted Nature" series

 

 

 

 

 

These last three come under the heading "Digital Art"

You can see a lot more HERE

Call in and get something special for someone, or yourself, for Christmas.

I know that I will be.

 

There's no Buntings like Snow Buntings....................................

...........like no Buntings I know.


One of five near Chevington Burn.

Another beachcomber.
 

Gosforth Park daily treble.

Any horse racing fans tuning in might think that I had the tote treble up at High Gosforth Park a.k.a. Newcastle Racecourse and had won a few bob. Au contraire.
The treble I had was at the nature reserve and consisted of Water Rail, Kingfisher and Bittern, in that order. On a bright but blustery afternoon I was sitting in the main hide chatting with Paul the reserve warden when a Water Rail appeared in one of the channels cut into the reed beds. There may have been more than one but we observed the bird/ s on six occasions. Not five minutes later I said to Paul "Don't look now but the Kingfisher has just landed right outside the hide". It was on the closest of the perches less than 3 metres away but the sun was behind. It sat for a minute or so before shooting off up the right hand channel and settling on a single reed which buckled under the weight. It moved again after a short while to the opposite side and after another 30 seconds zipped off  and out of sight.
I had decided to hang around until dark to see if there were any Starlings coming in to roost and had decided to make my way round to the Pyle hide. On arrival to my delight I found that a large area of reeds had been cut and a large area opened up. Normally I only call in here for ten minutes and a coffee, not expecting to see too much but all this extra openness might just change things, I thought to myself. While watching the Cormorant tree something lifted out the corner of my eye. A Grey Heron. It was lost from view almost immediately but reappeared further left, or so I thought, and by magic it had morphed into a Bittern. A brief view as it dropped straight into the reed bed again but that was the treble up. I didn't manage to capture the W. Rail or Bittern on camera due to light levels (one too high, the other too low) but did get a brightly backlit shot of the Kingfisher.
While in the Pyle hide and before the light went I did have 2 groups of Starlings which twisted and turned and lifted and dropped. One group had 21  birds the other 7. They were 5 minutes apart but did drop into the same area of reed bed. The question is.............how many Starlings constitutes a murmuration ? Did I have 2 ??
As I left the reserve in darkness the sound of the gathering Corvids on the periphery of the reserve was LOUD. There were hundreds, possibly thousands. A few more than my Starlings, anyway.
Hundreds of Woodpigeons passed by overhead also.

Autumn fruits

A walk up to the Rising Sun Country Park earlier in the week was quiet on the bird front but the fungi were very much on display. I did discover over three hundred and forty fruiting bodies of Fly Agaric in an area measuring approximately 200m x 4m in the western plantation which faces Station Road in Wallsend.

 

Some of the various stages of the Fly Agaric.

.............and a couple of another species.