BRANTON POOLS – THE RIVER BREAMISH - TRANSFER TO NEWCASTLE TRAIN STATION AND AIRPORT
WEATHER: thunderstorms overnight, rain first thing. Hot and humid all morning. Temp 25C
It was pouring with rain at 6am but it had eased off by the time we finished breakfast and the sun began to emerge.
The bus was loaded up with all of our luggage, we checked out of the hotel and set off inland to Branton Pools, located in the Breamish Valley where we hoped to see a few more species.
Branton Lakes is lovely local nature reserve and is brimming with wildlife, the short walk to the only hide takes you through wildflower meadows and woodland. Butterflies, wildflowers and birds abound we heard Willow Warbler, Chiffchaff, Blackcap, Song Thrush and Wren.
The water was populated with a good variety of ducks: Mallard, Gadwall, Wigeon, Tufted Duck and much to our enjoyment we saw a family party of Goldeneye. Not entirely unexpected but a great sighting nevertheless, we saw two females at least three chicks. Up until recently I never knew that Goldeneye actually breed in England, I thought all 200 pairs bred in Scotland.
Female Goldeneye
We watched the ducks for while as well as Little Grebes, Mute Swan, Greylag and Canada Geese. We never saw our other target species, Common Kingfisher.
Leaving the lakes we then drove a mile or so and parked near a large footbridge over the River Breamish, we hoped to see another target species, the Dipper. We saw Willow Warbler, Blackcap, Pied Wagtail, Grey Wagtail, Sand Martins were nesting in the sandy banks, but we did not see the Dipper and we never had time to explore further because we had to be in Central Newcastle by 11:00 am.
River Breamish - this feeds the lakes at Branton, we expected to see Dipper here, but failed to do so
So that was the last of our birding, we said goodbye to Christine and Peter, they had driven to Branton Pools in their own car and now headed off for an extra day, whilst the rest of us climbed onto the bus and headed for Newcastle.
Monkeyflower - Mimulus guttatus
I dropped Debbie, Brenda, Mike & Lorna at Newcastle train station at 11am and myself and Pauline drove down to the River Tyne to sit and eat our lunch. We sat near the Tyne Bridge where up to 1,200 pairs of Kittiwakes breed! This is 9 miles inland and the most inland site of a Kittiwake colony in the UK. Unfortunately the bridge is undergoing extensive repairs and is covered by scaffolding and protective coverings. Most of the birds are now nesting on the surrounding buildings and the bridge supports of other bridges.
the Tyne Bridge
Scaffolding - if you zoom in you can see rows of Kittiwakes here
clock tower with Kittiwakes at the top
Kittiwakes nesting on the Bridge supports - we saw that many nests had chicks
looking upriver from the Tyne Bridge
After lunch we drove to the Airport in time for our 4:30pm flight back to Bristol.