2B

With not much being reported from Northumberland recently I went to East Chevington this morning with SH to see if we could find anything.
On the way up we stopped at QE2 lake which was half frozen. A channel had been created between the ice and it was full of wildfowl.
Good numbers of Coot, Goldeneye, Mute Swan and a few Gadwall were in the channel. A group of Wigeon were feeding on the grass next to the car park.

In the fields opposite QE2 next to Alcan there were 28 Whooper Swans amongst a flock of Mutes.

We stopped at the fields just past Widdrington as there were a lot of geese spread over two fields.
There were near 300 geese mostly, Greylags but two stood out as they were near the front of the flock by themselves.
One was the Greylag/Canada Goose hybrid which I have seen at Chevington and Hauxley and the other was a Bean Goose.
I was just about to get a better look at it through Steve's scope when the flock took off towards Chevington.

At Chevington the North pool was frozen and only a few birds were on the islands.
Instead of staying at the pools on the off chance something would drop in we went to check the fields around the dunes and the smaller pools near the bottom of the south pool.

As we were going around the corner towards the end of the south pool I saw something flying low down which looked like a Buzzard or a small heron.
On second look I could see it was a Bittern, as I was watching it it disappeared behind the fence line over the south pool.

There wasn't much in the fields near the dunes apart from a flock of Goldfinch and Skylark. Although we did see a total of 7 Stonechat around the reserve.

Our last stop was at North Blyth where 10 Goldeneye were on the river and 13 Grey Heron were roosting in the docks.
A single female Common Scoter was amongst a group of Eider offshore.