Winter Wonderland

Mudfight. Two bull seals have a tussle in Brownsman Pool (Graeme Duncan)

A second coat 'weaner' pup has a break before heading into the water

Hiya! Another of our weaner pups plump and happy

Stunnner. A White-fronted Goose passes by Brownsman (Jamie Coleman)

Sunday 13^th November comments: It’s been a great weekend as everything went with plenty of highlights, except one thing; the weather. With south-easterly winds blowing across the islands with rain on Sunday, it wasn’t the best time to be out visiting the Farne Islands. Despite this, the resident warden team enjoyed every minute of it as we had some great birds, plenty of seal action and the FA Cup first round wasn’t bad for one north-east team…

The Seal colonies have been as active as ever with plenty of new pups being born and bull seals battling for island supremacy. On the bird front we’ve has some noticeable highlights including 19 White-fronted Geese with a good haul of Little Gulls moving south whilst a Water Rail in the gas cage was a bit novel. On a personal note, one of my footy teams; Gateshead, made it into round two of the FA Cup, so well done lads and keep it going…

Highlights: White-fronted Goose 19 in total (3 west at 09:40, one landed on Staple Island on 10:02 and then fifteen west on 11:00), Pink-footed Goose 1 west, Pochard male south, Velvet Scoter 2S, Common Scoter 57N, Red-breasted Merganser 2, Water Rail 1 in the gas cage on Brownsman! Little Auk 13 lingering, Little Gull 116 south (peak count of the year), Short-eared Owl single west, Skylark 11, Black Redstart male lingering, Blackbird 127, Redwing 28, Fieldfare 38, Snow Bunting 4 south and Reed Bunting 2.