1938 - The Vasculum

43
I also saw four birds on Holy Island on 12th June, and two at Monkhouse
on 17th July, in summer dress.
KNOT: I can find no previous local record of this bird for June,
but Bolam was under the impression that some birds might remain with us
through the summer, as writing of birds shot by others in July, he said, "
such individuals may never have left our shores, for on the 8th July, 1897, I
saw a flock of twelve Knots on the Fame Islands, not one of them, it is
worthy of remark, showing any trace of summer plumage, and that
experience was not singular" (B.2). I can now add the following records, all
from Fenham Flats:-Thirty grey and two red birds on 3rd June, eleven grey
and two red on 5th June, four grey on 8th June, seven grey and one reddish
on 11th June, two reddish birds on 18th July. It seems, therefore, to be
extremely probable that some Knots remain here right through the summer.
DUNLIN: Present in small numbers in June, and on the 17th and
25th July there were flocks of two to three hundred on Fenham Flats. I
estimated that at least 80 per cent. of these flocks were adults with black
underparts.
LITTLE STINT: With the flock of Sanderlings previously
mentioned, were two Little Stints in summer dress. The date was 5th June,
and this appears to be the first record of this species appearing on our coast
on the spring migration. Bolam wrote :-" I have never known it to occur in
Northumberland in spring, nor met with an adult, but there is one in the
British Museum in adult plumage marked ' Northumberland, presented by J.
E. Harting, 1888 ' "(A.3). Chapman also was very emphatic that it never
appeared in spring.
COMMON REDSHANK: This bird was always to be seen in
small numbers during June, and a pair were breeding on the coast near Beal.
The adult birds caused a great commotion whenever I passed by, and on one
occasion after the young were hatched, both birds perched on the top of a
high thorn hedge during the period of alarm, a thing I never saw before. On
the 17th, 18th, and 25th July, there were flocks of a hundred or more birds
on Fenham Flats.