Late June

The birds picked up a bit in the second half of June. Two Wood Sandpipers were found, one with a Green Sandpiper at Thacka Flash next to the motorway at Penrith and the second I found at Carr Beds at dusk both on the 24/6. Two Green Sandpiper were also present intermittently at Carr Beds between the 23/6 and 30/6.

Two Hobbies were also seen, one at Sandale near Bolton low houses on the 27/6 and the second on the 29/6 at finlandrigg NNR.

A Little Tern also paid a brief visit to tindale Tarn on the 29/6/09 an unusual bird inland for Cumbria.

At Miltonrigg the Pied Flycatcher brood fledged and 2 Wood Warblers were singing on the 19/6/09.

The main excitement of the week was that a new baby bird has appeared in the Franklin household which may slow down my birding a bit. He's already got a bit of seawatchers intense stare about him.

Early June

Traditionally this is always a quite time for birds locally and this year took that to the extreme. In the first fortnight of June there were only 2 bird reports to Birdguides, a Hobby in Upper Geltsdale and a calling Quail near Cockermouth, thats quiet. The birding Cumbria Yahoo group was the same with a flyover Red Kite in Geltsdale and a Wood Warbler at Miltonrigg.

The return of the Wood Warbler to Miltonrigg was good news but last year there were 6 singing males in the same area. Better news was a lovely pair of Pied Flycatchers taking food into a nest at Miltonrigg, while 2 Greater Spotted Woodpecker nests also held vocal young.


At Carr Beds other than the occasional Kingfisher the only thing of note were 2 large Goosander broods, one of 19.

Mid to Late May

Late May on the Solway turned out to be a real Skua fest with totals reaching 213 Pomarine skua, 19 Long Tailed including a flock of 9, 45 Artics and 13 Great Skuas passed by on strong SW winds, numbers for specific days are detailed in the table here.

Other good birds were also seen with my reward for getting the tide time wrong and starting skua watching very early on the 18/5 being a Spoonbill flying from the Scotch side over to Campfield Marsh where it remained to dusk.

Another aspect of the seawatching on the 18/5/09 was that the strong wind produced 35+ Manx Shearwaters, including 22 together, an uncommon bird in the Inner Solway.


Away from the sea virtually the only thing of interest reported was a Hobby with Swifts over Carlisle on the 28/5/09.

It was good to see that the Marsh Fritillary butterflies were flying in good numbers starting on the 22/5 with 3 the warm last week of May saw good numbers, this was also true of White Faced Darters at their North Cumbrian site

One of the high point for me recently has being able to watch 3 Otters on the River Eden near Rockliffe on warm evenings, attempts at photography can be seen one of which shows the Otters attempts to retain its catch of a huge eel which has wrapped itself around the Otters body.