Out and about in October

I twice went to the coast in October looking for goldcrests but didn't see one.  Then last week I heard one in the garden. The first camera I grabbed has only a 300mm lens so the photos are a bit heavily cropped but they are not too bad. This is the first goldcrest I have seen here for almost 20 years but I expect they are here more often and I don't notice. I had forgotten they have such bright orange feet.

When I was at the coast at least I saw a few gulls.  Gulls are not always easy even though I went on a gull ID course last winter.  This one is easy - a great black-backed gull (I hope).

And a herring gull.

And a first winter herring gull (I hope).

This is a bit of an experiment.  I made a panorama of redshanks at St Marys.  It looks OK on my computer but I don't know how it will come out on the blog.  Click on the photo to enlarge it and see if it worth looking at.

In Gosforth Nature Reserve I met a young roe deer fawn, now in her dark winter coat.  She was curious but not alarmed, even though I was fairly close.

I always find flight shots very difficult but at least this heron, also in the nature reserve, is nearly in focus.

Back in the garden the wasps, bees and hoverflies were enjoying the Kniphofia caulescens.

October was mostly wet and windy, starting with Storm Alex and ending with Storm Aiden.  The charts don't show wind but confirm the cloudy wet weather.

Early in the month was the UK's wettest single day on record.  And this Met Office chart confirms that it rained almost every day, which was what it felt like.

The reimposed lockdown will have an impact on all our activities but I'll try to get some photos for November, even if only in the garden.  During the first lockdown there was so much see that I was posting every two days.  Now I'll try to keep up once a week.

Time for a nap

At this time of year most of our local grey seals are on the Farne Islands.  They go there for the females to give birth in November and for the bulls to establish a territory on the beach and recruit a harem.  Last year over 2,700 pups were born and the grey seal population was almost 10,000.

Grey seals don't breed until they are at least four years old so some of the younger adults don't trouble to go to the Farnes.  A few stay around St Mary's Island at Whitley Bay and last weekend seven were hauled out at low tide for a spot of sunbathing (in a temperature of 3℃).  In fact they usually don't haul out but swim to the rocks at high tide and stay there as the water recedes, refloating on the next high tide.  I walked over to the island (which isn't an island at low tide) to see them.  There were six females and one bull, apparently asleep most of the time.  This is the bull.

This is a female.  Colours vary greatly in "grey" seals.

This photo shows the size difference between male and female.  Bulls weigh 170-310kg while females are 100-190kg.

If they were sleeping it was a fairly fitful sleep as there was a lot of yawning, stretching and scratching going on.

Although grey seals are gregarious they aren't very sociable and like to keep a space around them.  One female got a bit close to the bull which led to a bit of snarling.

One of the females had injuries on her chest and flipper, possibly from sharp rocks or fishing gear.

Many of them had scars.

Watching them is great fun and they often seem to produce almost human gestures and expressions.

There were two more seals in the water.  One of them made an attempt to get out, trying to use the waves to heave itself up onto the rocks but after a few minutes it gave up and returned to the sea.

On the way back to the car I saw a fox, also asleep.  Foxes only live in dens or earths when the vixens are raising cubs and for the rest of the time they sleep when and where they can.  This one was sunbathing in a very sheltered spot, only occasionally opening an eye or looking up when it heard a dog bark.

Bird of the week - Snow bunting

These snow buntings have been hanging around at St Mary's Island, near Whitley Bay for the past two or three weeks. They are fairly approachable but constantly on the move searching for seeds.  There are three but I never managed to get all three in the same photo.  I think these are probably a first winter male (L) and and a mature male, or possibly just two males.

Here is the female (front) with the younger male.

This is the male in his winter plumage.

Here is the female.

And the one I think is a younger male.

The older male has white outer tail feathers which show well when he flies.

The female shows a similar pattern.

Snow buntings (Plectrophenax nivalis) are found all around the northern hemisphere.  They breed in the far north and ours are occasional winter visitors from Scandinavia and Iceland.  In Swedish the snow bunting is snösparv, in Norwegian it is Snøspurv and in Icelandic it is Snjótittlingur.

By Cephas - BirdLife International. 2016. Plectrophenax nivalis. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68884160

Thomas Bewick included the snow bunting in A History of British Birds with this illustration of a male in summer plumage.

He also include a tawny bunting

but in the 1826 edition he added

so his tawny bunting was either a female snow bunting or a male in winter plumage.

John James Audubon painted these snow buntings for Birds of America.

Archibald Thorburn painted a male snow bunting in breeding plumage.

This composite image from Wikipedia shows the variations in plumage, including males in summer breeding plumage in white and black.

By Richard Crossley - The Crossley ID Guide Britain and Ireland, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29448050.

You can listen to Sir David Attenborough's BBC Radio 4 Tweet of the Day on snow buntings here.