Birding around Hartlepool

 

My only free day this week so decided to spend it birding around Hartlepool. I arrived at 8am and started with a couple of hours seawatching.

It was high tide at 0830 so I was hoping to see birds fairly close to the shore. Sadly not to be. Lots of herring gulls, cormorants and eiders were close but other birds were a bit further out. A red throated diver was preening not too far away and 4 common scoter were viewable through my binoculars. Everything else was a telescope job. 3/4 of the way to the horizon lots of gannets were plunge diving into the sea and an equally distant manx shearwater skimmed the waves. Sandwich terns were vocal as they went fishing and an arctic skua attacked one of them. After 2 hours I had a walk around the headland. More eiders and a few turnstones on the shoreline.

This was as close as I got to the Pilot pier as there were several fishermen on the end sitting on the wall, so I guessed that there would be few if any birds about.

A few ringed plover, turnstones and oystercatchers at Newburn bridge.

This young gull was in trouble. The incoming waves were too strong for it and it was fored into the rocks by the force of the sea.

For a few minutes all I could see was one of its wings as the sea trapped it between some rocks. However it managed to hop onto a rock and get away from the incoming sea.

Seaton Carew was my next stop.

Lots of little terns on the beach until the lifeguard put his flags there and they flew off. A few birds came back to the fenced off area to feed their young.

I managed to spot a young tern chick.

Saltholme was my next stop.

A great white egret from the Phil Stead hide.

It had a red ring on one of its legs.

In the evening 3 friends and I went to Sutton Bank visitor centre to look for turtle doves.

Great spooted woodpecker and jays were about as were collared dove, wood pigeons and lots of chaffinches. Eventually we saw a turtle dove in a tree above one of the feeding stations. It then flew down onto a fence.

We saw a turtle dove in 3 locations, heard them purring and saw them glide in flight, a perfect end to a long days birding.