Category: Trip Reports
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Exploring the Fascinating Flora of Lindisfarne
I have visited the Holy Island of Lindisfarne many times to admire the sites birdlife, chase rarities and even seek out insects, but never to appreciate its diverse and interesting flora. Lindisfarne is well known as an excellent site for those interested in botany, it’s unspoilt beaches, sprawling dune slacks, fields and expansive areas of…
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Wonderful Wildflowers at Bishop Middleham Quarry
A Special Site of Scientific Interest (SSSI) and Durham Wildlife Trust nature reserve encompassing a disused magnesian limestone quarry, I have read about Bishop Middleham Quarry for years. People, it seems, visit the site from far and wide to experience the fantastic flora on offer here. As well as for an abundance of colourful insects.…
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Eye-catching Invertebrates at Gosforth Nature Reserve
Owing to a diverse mosaic of habitats, including plentiful dead wood, Gosforth Nature Reserve is a fantastic place at which to indulge a fascination for the North East’s smaller wildlife. This Rhinocerous Beetle (Sinodendron cylindricum) was, without doubt, the star of the show last week. A first for me, this glossy, cylindrical beetle (a male)…
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Investigating the Prudhoe Spetchells
For a ages, I have read the blogs of others who have visited the Prudhoe Spetchells yet, shamefully, have never visited myself. Until now.
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Into the Wild Woods at Allen Banks
Spurred on by the gradual easing of lockdown restrictions, this weekend saw us venture inland to the wild reaches of Allen Banks
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On the hunt for orchids
Orchids capture the popular imagination to a far greater extent than any other group of plants. Indeed, birders, entomologists, mammal-watchers – those who would never, under normal circumstances, label themselves a botanist – often find themselves weak and the knees and enraptured by their blooms. Perhaps this is due to visual appeal – orchids are…
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A once in a lifetime encounter
Before yesterday commenced, I had only seen three Red-necked Grebes in my lifetime. Two as distant apparitions amid undulating heat haze on a vast swath of Estonian marshland, and the other, as an equally uninspiring spec on the horizon here in the UK. The latter being tossed astray by the tide around half a mile…
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Cetaceans on the Northumbrian coast
Yesterday I experienced something new and otherworldly: discovering a new side to my home county – Northumberland, for those who haven’t yet guessed – on a ten-hour trip into the North Sea with Northern Experience Wildlife Tours. The trip delivering a surreal experience as, at long last, I was able to get up close and…
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Cuddy ducks, clowns and stench of guano
Britain’s seabird colonies represent a spectacle like no other: bustling, raucous municipalities where a multitude of species congregate to form a single, far larger, living being. An avian city, cramped and lively, which moves and reacts as one when presented with danger, or opportunity – similar in many ways to the concrete jungles so many…
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The Northumbrian 142: a quick account of my first 24-hour bird race
This weekend past, I had the pleasure of taking part in my first 24-hour bird race. Wherein myself and the rest of the team – consisting of three topnotch local birders – attempted to observe as many birds species as possible within the county limits over the course of a full day. Starting at 11pm…
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Glossy Ibis and more
Spring has sprung, at long last. And all about my local area, the sapphire blooms of English bluebell mingle with the garish, Simpson-yellow of lesser celandine and the pristine white of flowering wood anemone. The air encompassing them ripe with the stench of ramsons carried on the breeze and nearby waterways – the ponds, streams…
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Northumberland’s Wild Interior
Uncharacteristically, I haven’t managed many far-flung ventures of late – the combined result of some drastic life changes, a busy schedule and the build-up of myriad more menial tasks. This, of course, has frustrated me to no end, boiling over with a snap decision this past Saturday to drop everything and travel outwards: inland to…