Scarce birds

Dull and raining on my first day off for a while. There were 34 Waxwings at Morrisons car park in Morpeth this afternoon. I parked the car a few feet from a bright Rowan tree expecting the Waxwings to fly into it to feed. As it was mild they were flying up in the air catching insects. After taking half a dozen shots my battery went dead in my camera. As expected a few minutes later the flock descended onto the Rowan tree. I called into the local ponds and despite the high water levels there was a lot of wildfowl about. At Bothal and Longhirst flash good flocks of Teal and Wigeon. A bit of wife swapping at Bothal with a female Pochard and a male Tufted duck in one corner of the pond and a male Pochard with a female Tufted at the opposite corner.

At Linton pond the gulls from the tip were flying into the main pond to bathe. There were hundreds of Herring and Great black backs and among them was a third winter Iceland gull flew in bathed briefly then flew off. I believe it was a third winter with grey back and scapulars, white tail and wing tips with just a few flecks of brown on the neck and back. Among the hundreds of Canada geese was a Bean Goose (fabalis). Both these birds could have been photographed...dammit! A Grey lag goose had an orange neck ring with the letters AJJ. A canny afternoon's local birding. Above the Morrisons supermarket Waxwings before my camera packed in.