After everybody elses' wonderful exotic holiday locations, this might seem a bit tame, but we thoroughly enjoyed it.
I thought it would be interesting to compare and contrast the birds we saw at the two cottages, in completely different habitats.
In the first week, we stayed in a cottage right in the middle of Waren Mill, just metres away from Budle Bay. There was a stream running beside the garden, and on its other side was a lush meadow then trees. All these birds were seen or heard either from the cottage or its garden:
Barn swallow; house martin; woodpigeon; collared dove; house sparrow; great tit; pied wagtail; rook; jackdaw; chiffchaff; willow warbler; greenfinch; blackbird; pheasant; magpie; swift; a grey wagtail feeding its newly fledged chick in the stream; dipper (we saw two together); dunnock; kestrel; moorhen (with nesting material in its beak); song thrush; blackcap; black headed gull; herring gull; skylark; robin; blue tit; carrion crow; chaffinch; starling; wren; buzzard and oystercatcher. 34 species. [We also, bizarrely, saw rheas from this cottage, but I suspect they can’t be added to any UK list! I think a local farmer must be breeding them.]
In the second week, we stayed four miles out of Newcastleton in the Scottish Borders. Here, the cottage was on its own, in the middle of a field (sheep). A tiny stream ran through it, there were lots of deciduous trees immediately around the cottage, a small trout lake, and two meadows away, a lot of conifers. These are the birds we saw/heard from this cottage:
Twite; carrion crow; house martin; sand martin; barn swallow; pied wagtail; wren; chaffinch; song thrush; buzzard; siskin; great tit; woodpigeon; blackbird; willow warbler; chiffchaff; goldfinch; grey wagtail; garden warbler; grey heron; meadow pipit; robin; pheasant and swift. 24 species. A friend and my daughter also saw a yellow wagtail on the wall right outside the sitting room, and my daughter heard a tawny owl and curlew from her bedroom. 27 species. I’ve also seen a roe deer here, and we all saw a hare right outside the house.
I saw a total of 91 species on the holiday (if I include the red kite on the M40 on the way home). These are the other ones we saw:
Yellowhammer; shelduck; eider; gannet; puffin; razorbill; shag; guillemot; common gull; lesser black backed gull; arctic tern; sandwich tern; cormorant; kittiwake; fulmar; goldfinch; oystercatcher; meadow pipit; whinchat; stonechat; feral pigeon; great crested grebe; mallard; little egret; rock pipit; roseate tern; barn owl; coot; great black backed gull; grey heron; hen harrier; goosander; wood warbler; jay; snipe; golden eagle; tree pipit; common crossbill; common sandpiper; bullfinch; long tailed tit; cuckoo; green woodpecker; goldcrest; curlew; great spotted woodpecker; red legged partridge; whitethroat; reed bunting; sedge warbler; tufted duck; spotted flycatcher; sparrowhawk; northern goshawk and red kite.
(Lifers in bold.)