Birds, beaches and boats:

Northeast coastal diary, 2011

by Daniel M Turner

Available from 14 November 2015. Book Price £12.99 plus p&p (Royal Mail Signed For service). 

This Journal covers a year in the author’s life, after he decided to leave his job and branch out. He describes various findings made during some of his regular coastal bird surveys in Northeast England, from the river Tyne northwards into East Lothian and to The Netherlands on a fulmar workshop. The mouth of the Tyne and local fish quay feature highly; day-to-day conversations with fishermen, lifeboat men and other river folk are described. The author goes about fund-raising activities for Tynemouth lifeboat station and begins as a volunteer driver at St Oswald’s Hospice (Gosforth). Summer brings additional bird observations with monitoring of the nesting Tyne kittiwakes and local fulmars. The book’s pages are flavoured by passing ships and the comings and goings of the fishing fleet at North Shields fish quay … and its gulls.