January 16 2013

At last a rest day where I wasn’t working, or travelling, or drinking or suffering from the dreaded Norovirus bug!

It seems that, this year, everyone is doing some sort of challenge. So not to be out done and left out, I did my own today. It’s TTCEGNMTOHYFI, that’s the Take The Car Everywhere and Go No More Than One Hundred Yards From It challenge!

It has a very simple scoring system, today’s score was 4

It means nothing, it’s just a random number.

I started this morning nice and early on the causeway at Holy Island, an excellent place for this kind of challenge, as you don’t even have to get out of the car.

The car temperature gauge said it was –6 degrees as I left the house, steadily warming up during the day to +2 degrees. I felt cold only once, during a very nice sunrise…

ice floe’s on the road

From the car…

Bar-tailed Godwit

Grey Plover

Whooper Swan

Herring Gull

Long-tailed Duck

Further down the road on the way back, both Kestrel and Merlin were seen

the Merlin had been as close as the Kestrel was to the road, but my mode of travel spooked it down the hedge a bit

Budle Bay was surprisingly quiet, but Stag Rocks was canny. A Great Northern Diver, 6 Red-throated Diver, 3 Slavonian Grebe, 2 Fulmar, 40ish Common Scoter and 20ish Long-tailed Duck

but just one Purple Sandpiper.

Approaching Seahouses, this beauty stopped me in my tracks…

Short-eared Owl

Eventually I end up at Cresswell, just as some bloke in a bright red coat gets out of his car to try and photograph the Pink-footed Goose flock, which was right next to the road. Needless to say most of the flock moved into the middle of the field, he then flushed the rest when he pulled up behind Ian’s car and got his telescope out to look at the birds; the dipstick was a birder!!!

Fortunately a small group close to my car didn’t flush…

and so, at the end of the birding day, I had seen 73 species