Bridled or Sooty? That is the question...

 Last Monday a Bridled Tern was reported on Inner Farne briefly. Then, very soon after the Coquet Island wardens put the cat among the pigeons when they reported that a Sooty Tern was on their island. The two bird theory? With no photos of the Farnes bird, it doesnt seem plausible to me that these two tropical terns would arrive on the same afternoon with no sightings of either anywhere else. Apparently the Farnes team are sticking by their guns with their original theory but the bird has not returned.

As is the way, local Puffin Cruises boats were chartered to get birders out to Coquet where those on board got decent views of the Sooty. Unfortunately I was working from home and couldnt make it. Next moring I was passing Amble on the way to work so I took bins and scope hoping for  a distant dot from the mainland. Plans took a dip when there were no further sightings of the bird after Monday night.

Bringing us back to the present, yesterday morning, the WhatsApp buzzed again with Richard the warden reporting that the Sooty Tern was back. After a week where presumably it had been out to sea as these terns are very pelagic, it was now on the island.

This time I was ready to give it a go. Again working from home, I finished earlier and headed down to Hauxley late afternoon. In the two years since the Bridled Tern here., Id forgotten how ridiculous this is. We could see the tern but it was a miniscule speck and in the hour I watched, it didnt fly from its rock. Just when you think views cant get any worse, it sank back over the rock to roost and it couldnt be seen at all.

See here for dejavu...the tale was identical!    

Click to see the bird and this is at 50x mag through the scope!

So at 6pm a dozen of us clambered aboard the boat on a lovely evening and headed across to the island. Due to the tide being quite low we still couldnt get close in but views were at least more reasonable than earlier. The trip was an hour long and for the first half of that the bird was nowhere to be seen. Luckily it eventually reappeared much to the relief of all on board.

This is the 4th Sooty Tern in Northumberland since the first in 1966, and is my 2nd after the 2020 local patch bird. 

Most of the morden day records of this pair of terns in Northumberland get misidentified on first sightings. In 88 a Sooty became Bridled, In 2020 a Bridled became Sooty and again this year.  So, it pays to keep an open mind when one is reported but whichever one it is, they are well worth going to see. Fantastic.

High Summer

 Its been a few weeks since I actually posted about some of the things I have been seeing over the warmer period. Before that though, I'll add, while we have had a nice summer, we've not had a heatwave on the North Northumberland coast. To update here is a bit of a calendar - 

4th July - 

A Quail was calling in the bean field behind us. It was heard a few times but it never did that prolonged dripping tap call they usually do, just an odd phrase here and there.

5th July - 

The Quail again briefly.

7th July - 

And again only once at 11pm.

8th July - 

I didnt get Grasshopper Warbler here in the spring so it was a surprise to get one reeling at this late date in the back hedge at 11pm.  

9th July - 

Despite the moth trap being used, the moth highlight was only my 2nd Bordered Straw perched out at lunchtime on some Sweet Williams. I moved it to Ragwort to get this shot.

10th July - 

Had an open trap morning for AWG with 12 visitors attending. We had 205 moths of 79 species to view.

11th July - 

The morning birding at Alnmouth with John. The wind has swung northerly cooling things a bit. On the estuary were 5 Little Egret, 1 male Bar tailed Godwit in summer plumage, 3 Common Sandpipers, 1 Avocet. 

Up viewing Foxton Bends from the road we had- 7 Avocets, 3 Lesser black backed Gulls, 1ad summer Mediterranean Gull, 4 Little Egret, 6 Common Sandpiers, 2 Greenshank and most unusually, a Whooper Swan!

Next off to Seaton Point to check the sea. 11 Manx Shearwaters N, 45 Common Scoter N, 42 Arctic Terns N, 3 Goosander n, 1 Red breasted Merganser N, 18 Sandwich Tern N, 1 ad Little Gull N, 6 Puffins.

13th July - 

A bit of excitement with the arrival of a summer plumaged female Red necked Phalarope on Druridge Budge Fields. What a stunner. 

In the half an hour I was there, while watching the Phalarope, an adult Hobby flew low over the hide and circled the plantation over the field. Nice views. 1 ad Mediterranean Gull flew N, plus 12 Black tailed Godwits, 1 male Ruff and 2 Greenshank.

21st July - 

2 Hedgehogs below our feeders on eating a pear! 30 Sand Martins were picking at the gable end of School House for some unknown reason?

22nd July - 

A large count of 48 Small Mottled Willows in the moth trap, what a year its been for this normally rare moth. A Little Egret was on the rocks at Salters Gate layby and a juv Red Kite was catching grasshoppers up on the Hips Heugh field. A patch first for me and on the garden list too.

 26th July - 

Finally rain all day other than a couple of hours around lunchtime.

At the Aln Estuary were 3 Greenshank, 2 Common Sandpipers, 3 Avocets plus a chick, 60+ Dunlin all adults, 7 Little Egret, 15 Swifts over head.

1st August - 

A gardening day with 1 Whimbrel over, 1 Painted Lady, 1 Holly Blue, 1 Comma and 1 Wool Carder Bee.

Up at the Cricket field a new plant for me, Common Hemp Nettle.

Another quiet summer....

Bill Oddie...

 I was so sad to hear of the passing of Bill Oddie the other day. Are there any long time birders who didnt meet him at one place or another? The thing about Bill is that, unlike the other celeb bandwagon jumpers, he was a real, life long birder. And a top one too. You would see the small bumbling figure of a comic on TV, larking around on a Trandem ? or Triplet as I think its known, totally unaware of his skill and expertise in the field of natural history. 

One of the things that drew me to the great man was his link to Northumberland. You will have read on more than one occasion, if you frequent this blog, of my art hero Eric Ennion and his time as director of Monks House Bird Observatory at Seahouses. Well, not only did Bill know of him, he actually knew him and stayed at the observatory with Eric and his wife! What an era that time must have been.

As with many other birder of a certain age, Mr Oddie's and my own paths crossed a couple of times in the field.

I think the first time was when I was a ringer at Hauxley Ringing Station. It was a quiet early autumn day with a golden glow to the sun as I extracted a small warbler from a 60 ft mist net in from of 'A' Trap on the south edge of the gardens. I felt the presence of a person over my right shoulder and turned to see Bill standing there watching. We exchanged a few pleasantries by the net pole about the recent birding, though I cant remember the details, and off he went, birding.

Not long after, Northumbria Ringing Group was holding its annual members weekend on Holy Island in October. Bill was invited to the soiree to give us a talk on his birding travels. About 20 of us were crammed into the back room of the Lindisfarne Hotel on the Island where we had a great evening chatting to and listening to Bill's tales. At one point he put up a slide of a juvenile  (then) Dendroica warbler and asked us if we could identify it? In days before the internet and great digital images, these things weren't easy, but I recognised this one straight away even though Id never been further west than Wales. It was a Chestnut sided Warbler. Bill was most impressed!

From there, the evening descended into a booze fuelled early hours lock-in, but as the drink took its toll, Bill took the sensible option and vanished to his room.

Next day, I can feel the hangover now typing this, with the wind from the west, migrants were sparse. Head pounding, with a greenish-grey pallor and a bottle of milk in my top pocket, to ease the stomach,  we bumped into Bill along the Crooked Lonnen where he had very little in the way of birds.

I didn't meet him again, but did read his write up of that weekend in Birdwatch and subsequently in his book 'Gripping Yarns'. His phrase, 'there was more bonhomie and booze than birds' summed it up brilliantly.

Rest in peace Bill, you were an inspiration...

20 years of Blogging!

 On 15th July 2006 this blog began as Boulmer Birder. At the time we lived in Longhoughton and every dog walk was down to the Boulmer headland less than 2 miles away. Back then a Corn Bunting singing on wires was one of the last of his kind with only one other record since. When I watched Boulmer in the 90s we had around 18 singing males on the headland in areas where the main agriculture was the growing of vegetables such as cabbages and turnips. We would walk the quiet WW2 runways and the coast often not meeting a sole. Now the area is a cordoned off no go area with Private Keep out signs on every single 5 bar gate so the burgeoning population of visitors, tourists and caravanners are corralled onto a 50 mtrs wide coast strip.

When I set the blog up I was mostly inspired by Graeme Catley's Peewit blog and his amazing photographs and his prolific birding output and Alan Tilmouth's Grocer blog ( now defunct so no link). I was never going to keep up with that but small steps followed. Since my first full year in 2007 when I made over 250 entries, the blog has slowly declined down to its lowest output of 26 posts in 2025, a mere 10% of the starting figure! The main reason for that, I'd say, is the increase in Social Media usage and the now ubiquitous use of Smart Phones rather than sitting down at a PC. But, I still enjoy the blog, so a couple of posts a month will still be forced upon you, dear readers! I wonder how many readers out of the 3.5 million hits are still visiting since the start? By the way, don't take any notice of the hit counter going forward, its just a sea of 'bot' hits, another feature we didn't see at the start or even a year ago!  

Here in July 2026, those old posts seem so dated. The blog has seen a few changes over the years from Boulmer Birder to From the Notebook and on to Stewchat. We now live a couple of miles further north where I watch the patch around our village but still make visits to Boulmer mainly during migration seasons and it still turns up some good birds. Its not just birds either ( though it was never just birds really) that grace the output. You are as likely to see an insect or plant as a bird but one thing remains constant. The blog is mostly about the wildlife of Northumberland and always will be, other than a couple of weeks holiday a year to break things up for a change.

What next? For me, retirement is not far away, all being well, when I intend to put a lot more time into the things I actually enjoy doing. There will be more time for art, more time for walks for wildlife, more gardening and who knows what else, maybe a bit of fishing again? One thing is certain, you will read about some of it on here.

Thank you all for visiting and making comments on my posts, they are all very welcome. Thanks to all of the virtual friends I have made through blogging, Dean Stables, Steve Gale, Mark Skevington, Gavin Haig, the late and sadly missed Dylan Wrathall, Seth Gibson, David Bryant, Simon Thompson, Alastair Forsyth et al the list is endless! The role these individuals play should not be underestimated. Most I have never met, but I hang on to their words of inspiration as if they were old school mates.

So that's all folks here's to the future and keep blogging!

Corn Bunting, this one a bit clearer and closer from North Uist in 2014...

  

  

     

New.

 Its been a good spell this week for the garden mothing with several new species recorded. Im always amazed how the list just continues onwards and upwards after 17 years regular trapping here.

I find the main cause is weather. After a week long heatwave of record breaking temperatures down south in June I'm sure moths disperse widely. On a local level this occurs too. If we get a warm day inland with a westerly breeze, I think it lifts moorland moths higher into the air and they drift out towards the coast where my trap is waiting.

Here are the new additions other than the Scarlet Tiger - 

Wood Sage Plume Capperia britanniodactylus

Wood Sage Plume only has one other Northumberland record when 30 larvae were found in the Cheviot Hills in 2024.

Isotrias rectifasciana

Monochroa lucidella 2 of these.

Epinotia abbreviana, an elm feeder. We have a small elm I planted beside the trap that is now 7 feet tall, maybe that has pulled it in? 

A short 'Summery' !

 While it has been very much warm enough for me, the North Northumberland coast has not seen the roasting temperatures of the south and inland. On Saturday it did reach 28 degrees in the afternoon but has mainly been in the 21 - 25 degree range. We had a massive thunderstorm on Wednesday night that frightened Peggy half to death so we were up from 3am til 6am comforting her on the settee. The wind has been a touch irritating too, with SW 3 - 5 most of the time, but over all it has just been summery weather.

As I mentioned last time, one star this week was the garden arrival of Wool Carder Bees. These are rare in Northumberland with only a few records around Berwick and the Tyne Valley so these were not on my radar. In fact it was only from photos I took of a 'Leafcutter Bee' that made me cotton on to their presence.

To begin with a single male was photographed on Great Mullein chewing at the furry leaves. His yellow spotting on abdomen and legs was quite obvious in photos, a nice colourful little bee a bit like Hairy Footed Flower Bee.

After a few days I planted two new Stachys byzantina plants ( Lambs Ears, a Wool Carder favourite) . Before I had patted the soil down around them a male Wool Carder had taken them as his territory and was fighting off other bees. Since then both male and female bees have been present, females taking away 'cotton wool buds' of fluff away to nest holes out of the garden somewhere. 

They are a great addition to the garden fauna.

 

Wool Carder Bees in the garden.

 As if that nice surprise wasn't good enough, the warm weather had another stunning gift in store.

On Sunday morning the moth trap was particularly busy with micros, the over night minimum temperature being 17 degrees. I was being as diligent with them as I could not wanting any to escape as there was a good chance of a garden first in these conditions.

As I rolled back the covering towel to extract the last egg tray I was struck by a real shocker! Sat there was a proper Blackpool Illumination of a moth, a Scarlet Tiger! Wow, what a stunner and full Northumberland first too, for both VCs 67 and 68. Looks like the most Northerly UK record too.

When I looked back again, the egg tray was empty. The moth was flying circuits around the trap. Shaking in case it got away, I took the whole trap into the greehouse just in case it did get out where I could at least have another chance, As it happened the potting went well and I could relax.

I had only seen my first last year at Cley, Norfolk. In my post last June, I say, 'only found in the south' never expecting one in the garden a year later.

My friend Ian Fisher was keen to twitch the moth so I kept it until late afternoon then released it after a photo session. Iain Leach commented on Scottish Moths that they had also been recorded in Dumfries and Galloway and Carlisle in recent times, so I wouldnt take bets on us being blase about these in 5 years time. 

Unusual or extreme weather even far away can drop some interesting stuff in to the garden...

Scarlet Tiger

More thoughts on PSL...

How things can change in a week. Sometimes we need to have a word with ourselves, to bring us back to reality, a grounding if you like. In recent times I have not only been birding or mothing. I have been looking at everything from Spiders to Mosses and Beetles to fruit flies. All that I have identified or had identified for me have been carefully added to my list. What used to be on a crappy old spreadsheet is now on a fabulous all singing and dancing searchable website.

Today, the alarm bell has rung. While I was already awake.

Seth Gibson, Alastair Forsyth and Steve Gale have all debated the topic on their blogs, that I have read with great interest. These three naturalists and bloggers are a real inspiration to me, so when one speaks I tend to listen.

The thing is, with the rise of PSL there is perceived to be a decline in actual biodiversity recording standards whereby listers are not being as rigorous as they should be when listing a new form of life.

Where people are concerned, no recording system with a competition factor will be clean. Looking on the PSL website, I see that Red necked Nightjar has been included by one observer, who would need to be at least 180 yrs old to have seen the only British record! That's their choice I suppose, but the species on my list are at the very least, plausible, and most are accurate with a few being aggs, or the commonest of a bunch based on distribution etc, but I if I tick a species on that basis, I will not add a congener as I couldnt be sure its different to the one I already have. For example I have Dandelion but not to species, I have Mouse Spider as Scotophaeus blackwallii as it is by far most likely but Ive not had any scrutinised. Mouse Spiders twin will not be added without both being checked and the same with Dandelions etc. 

Things are added to iRecord but if they don't meet the verifier's criteria that's ok, I'll have learned something and will move on.

I know birds, moths, mammals, butterflies and most fish even, quite well, but once these groups are  becoming less likely to be a new addition, along comes flowering plants, fungi and invertebrates. Anyone who has perused the Naturespot site or the British Arachnological Society page for example, will know full well that very few of these can be brought to accurate species level without the use of various scientific methods and equipment. Yet we novices ( maybe not the right word? How can I be a novice after 50 years of wildlife watching?) still plod along trying to match species to images and text in books on websites and in social media. Maybe we ( I) are /am deluded?

I think I know the reason. I am not and never will be a scientist. I was and probably still am an Urchin, a Poacher, a Tresspasser, Billy Casper, BB, Ennion, Iain Niall, a Ladybird book, a throwback to times past. 

I don't have a microscope and have never really used a Dichotomous key. I might like to, but will I ever? I'm not sure it matters enough to me but who knows, never say never. I like to find new things for much simpler reasons, and no, its not to add to a list. It is to enjoy the chase, the find and the beauty. The list just keeps the treasures in an order where I can find them again. 

So I'm sure I and many others will continue in this way until we either see the light or give up. Keep on Listing folks, but try to keep it as real as possible!  

Oonops. Its one of the two...

Wool Carder Bee, added to the list today after finding my first in the garden on Sunday. A scarce species in Northumberland