End of year favourites - Northumberland

As I live on the northern edge of Newcastle it is very easy to escape into proper countryside.  Away from my garden and my two local haunts of Gosforth Park and Banks' Pond I most often head north up the Northumberland coast or west up the Tyne Valley.  Here are a few photos from my travels in Newcastle and Northumberland this year.

I expect you knew what they all are but if not here's a list: brambling (♂), common frog, ashy mining bee (♂), common lizard, chocolate mining bee (♀), adder (♂), grey seal, ring-necked parakeet, common hawker (♂), willow tit, yellowhammer (♂), hawfinch (♂), swallow, twite (♂), shore lark, snow bunting (♂), roe deer (♀).

Nearly ready for the off

These young swallows are nearly ready for departure.  My friends Denise & Phil have been watching the birds which built a nest in their back porch, the first time they have had a swallow nest.  The four eggs hatched on 23rd June and these photos were taken on 13th July, when the chicks were 20 days old.  Fledging occurs at 20-22 days so I was just in time.

Photographing them was an interesting experience, using flash, manual focus and trying to get the timing right.  The parents were arriving every couple of minutes with food and seemed to put up with me without complaint.  Looking through the photos I noticed that sometimes the parent is side on (as above) and sometimes it has its back towards the camera (as below).  I wonder if one parent habitually lands at the same place on the nest and the other in a slightly different place.  I have noticed in the blue tit camera box in previous years that one parent goes to one side and the other the other.  With swallows I can't tell the parents apart.

It was a great pleasure to watch and to photograph the birds.  Many thanks to Denise & Phil for the opportunity.

My left hand

I am right-handed so if I am holding something to be photographed it is in my left hand.  As well as feeding the robin and the pheasant I seem often to be catching birds that have strayed into the house or greenhouse or, occasionally, been stunned by flying into the window and everything has to have its photo taken before release.  Over the last few years I have collected quite a few photos of my left hand and here are some of them.  I wonder what I'll catch this year? Whatever it is, it will have its photo taken.

I expect you'll recognise everything.  The only tricky one is after the pheasant and before the blackbird and is a juvenile whitethroat that got stuck in the greenhouse.