TRAVEL TO NEWCASTLE - BIG WATERS NATURE RESERVE - 'NORTHUMBERLANDIA' AND SHOTTON POOLS
WEATHER: borken sunshine, quite breezy and quite warm. Top temp 20C
It was a very early start for me (and Dawn) today, up at 3:30am!! I took a flight from Bristol to Newcastle with Pauline, (one of the group enlisted on this tour), which starts tomorrow.
We arrived at Newcastle Airport at 8:20am, collected our bus and set off to find some breakfast! After eating, our first port of call was the small Nature Reserve called Big Waters. OK, it has a large lake but Big Waters? Really! Along the approch track we saw Magpie and a Tree Sparrow.
We walked around the lake, through some woodland and we scanned some open meadows, it was very pleasant there, nothing too unusual but plenty to see.
All the waterfowl seemed to have a bunch of chicks, they were everywhere! Mallards, Gadwall, Great Crested and Little Grebes, Canada and Greylag Geese, Mute Swans, Coots and Moorhens, chicks were coming out my ears! A pair of Avocets was present also a pair of Common Terns (without visible chicks), we saw Reed Warblers and Reed Buntings visiting nest sites and the sky had the occasional Barn Swallow and House Martin nipping across it.
the lake at 'Big Waters'
The woodland produced very little although we did hear quite a few birds calling or singing. We got onto a very obliging Chiffchaff, a very greenish one with pinkish legs!! If it was not singing you may well have thought that it was a Willow Warbler, which was also singing further along the track. We heard and saw Blackcaps, Bullfinches called but did not show and all the usual common woodland birds either called or sang: Blackbird, Wren, Robin, Chaffinch, Blue and Great Tits, Magpie, Jackdaw and Crow.
Marsh Orchid sp. and Spotted orchid in the background
Pauline found a couple of orchids, Common Spotted and Marsh Orchids (I think), also a few butterflies whizzed around, we noted Meadow Brown, Ringlet, Small Heath, Red Admiral and painted Lady. Dozens of damselflies were on the wing too.
From Big Waters we went to Big Landscaping at 'Northumberlandia' which is known as the "Lady of the North". 'Northumberlandia' is a huge land art sculpture in the shape of a reclining female figure, which was completed in 2012. It is a unique piece of public art set in a 46 acre community park with 4 miles of footpaths on and around the landform which is the centre piece of this wonderful place. Wildflowers and butterflies are prolific, especially around the pools and the slopes of the centre piece. Dozens and dozens of orchids are growing alongside the footpaths.
We found a few birds too, Common Whitethroat, Linnets, Tufted Duck, Little Grebe, Gadwall and Mallards, Swallows and House Martins.
female Common Blue
The best of the birding was found just outside of the park in the large scrapes of the disused surface mine called Shotton Pools. I never took my scope (which is a must when visiting these pools) but we managed to see Avocets, Lapwings, Common Ringed Plovers, Oystercatcher, some Herring and Lesser Black-backed Gulls, a lot of distant birds went unidentified.
a couple of the Shotton Pool scrapes
We walked back to the cafe and indulged in a special offer 'cream-tea', yummy that was nice. We then returned to the park and circumnaviagted the huge landscaped 'Woman of the North' seeing many more orchids but few birds as the wind had picked up quite a bit. Pauline found a Kestrel and we finally located a Common Whitethroat which showed very well for us.
there is a Whitethroat in this picture somewhere?
Common Bluet Damselfly
More butterflies went onto the list: Painted Lady, Small Tortoiseshell, Common Blue and we identified a Common Bluet Damselfly and a Five-spot Burnet Moth.
Bee Orchid
It was late afternoon when we arrived at our one-night hotel, we found three orchid species growing in the grass verge around the car park including a lovely Bee Orchid.