Baywatch

Newbiggin by-the-sea is a fishing village on the south coast of Northumberland.  As a youngster I remember coming here to play on the beach and it seemed to my young eyes to be massive.  In just a few years the beach was all but gone, washed away by the sea.  There are just a handful of fishermen now who still regularly launch their cobles into the bay.

A large regeneration effort led to the man made recreation of the beach, and the village is all the better for it.  It helps bring the day trippers in and the museum on the bay explains Newbiggin's fishing heritage.

I took these pictures on an extremely windy, very cold February.

Saint Bartholomew's church sits at the northern end of the bay in what is not surprisingly called Church Point. From there you get an excellent views across the bay and down the coast towards Blyth and the off shore wind farm.

The large length of giant grey rocks stretching into the bay form part of the sea defence and it was popular with all of the local kids to climb across and do a little crab fishing.

Another aspect of the regeneration was the creation of a new break water as well as an art installation known as "The Couple", a giant sculpture of a man and a woman looking out into the North Sea.

Jeepers, Creeper

Occasionally, we get visitors to the garden that we don't see very often.  The last time we saw a Treecreeper was more than two years ago.  Last week Terry spotted one motoring around the silver birch tree outside the kitchen window.

The speed in which it ascended the tree is quite startling.  The vertical surface doesn't present much of an obstacle for this beautiful little bird.  The curved bill is an ideal tool for discovering insects and spiders, it's main diet.  

Water Bed

Last weekend, our friend Ian stayed for a few days.  Ian is a great amateur photographer and he was one of the voices that persuaded me to start this blog.  He lives in northern Spain with his partner and his blog, Tales from Toriello is a great read. 

We opted to pay a visit to Whisby Nature Reserve as Ian had never been there before.  I managed to snap these photos in a quiet corner of one of the lakes.  What surprised me was how the swans pretty much ignored us and settled down despite the racket from the various gulls close by.

Showtime

Following on from last week's post I said that I upload a some more images from the country show at Thorseby Hall.  These pictures are from the last couple of shows.

Thoresby Hall 

Sheepdog at work

Fastest dog competition

The Scurry Competition

A Steppes Hawk

Start Your Engines

The Thoresby Country Show is an annual event that takes place towards the end of February. We love the sheer variety of displays, craftsman and stalls on display.  My only gripe is that the weather can be unpredictable at this time of year so you'll never know if your going to be wading through mud or having your face frozen off by the wind.  This year, it was the latter.

I'll do a more general post on the show next time, but the thing we enjoyed the most was the chainsaw challenge.  Half a dozen chainsaw artists creating a piece in thirty minutes. The pieces would then be auctioned off to the spectators afterwards.

We managed to get a good spot where we had a great view of one of the artists at work.

Needless to say, we where impressed by the skill and talent on display, watching incredible birds appearing out of a large piece of wood.  I loved how much the guy wielding the chainsaw seemed to enjoy what he was going and the  Barn Owl was beginning to take shape in front of us.

There were bigger, more elaborate creations taking shape but what I liked about this one was the way the artist used the bark to help create the texture and colour of the wing.

A blow torch was used to colour parts of the sculpture.  We were impressed by the finished piece.

So impressed, we actually entered the bidding for it.  Amazingly, we won.

The light from the flash is a little harsh but I do like how it shows up every line and scratch.  It's an incredibly tactile object (and its also bloody heavy!).

Once the wood has dried out (we've been told this can take up to a year) we'll make a decision as to where "Oz" will sit.

Over the Border

 Living in the north of Nottinghamshire, geographically we sit on the edge of neighbouring counties.  Ten minutes drive and we're in South Yorkshire or Lincolnshire.  Lincoln is actually the closest city to us.

Our retired neighbour, Bill pointed us in the direction of Whisby Nature Reserve in Lincolnshire, so a few weeks ago we decided to hop over the border and pay a visit.

We were surprised by how large the reserve was, with several large lakes on the site.  A large part of the reserve was closed when we visited, as a bridge that was being built over a train line was not quite finished.  It is hoped that it will be open at the end of February.

There are numerous hides where you can watch what is going on out on the water and a rather impressive centre which includes a shop and large cafe.  I also took a few photos of the bird feeders that they had set up from a nearby viewing point.  I thought that our own garden feeders had a lot of Grey and Blue Tits using it.  At Whisby there seemed to be dozens of them.

We're looking forward to exploring more of this reserve in the coming weeks.  When we visited it was cold, dull and very overcast and I'm looking forward to seeing what else this great reserve has to offer.

Birds of a Feather

Anyone who reads this blog regularly will know that we have a soft spot for the pheasants that come into the garden.  In recent months, the male pheasant that we have nicknamed Billy has been the only bird around.  He comes to the back door where we feed him peanuts.  He's also started to hurry around to the back door when I call him from the bedroom window.

What we haven't really seen since early autumn have been any females.  On Saturday morning we where blessed with the presence of not one, but four hens who slipped into the garden.

Of course,they rushed straight to the area beneath the bird feeders.  We did not know if these girls where part of a family that we had seen in the summer or if they unconnected birds that had formed a group.  

One thing we did notice was as soon as one headed off, the others would leave what they where doing and hurry to catch up.  They headed straight for the bird feeder station in the corner of the garden.

The four pheasants hung around the garden for most of the day, moving from one feeder to the other.  We spotted Billy, observing from the farmers field behind the wire fence but neither he nor the females where particularly interested in each other.

We haven't seen them today, so its possible that they don't stay in the same area for very long.  This might be just as well, as we've seen and heard foxes in the garden in recent days and yesterday we also witnessed  one of the local cats take out a grey squirrel.  Nature can be cruel.