Stag rocks
Harkess or 'Stag rocks' (white deer painted on rocks) is an excellent winter site and one of the best in Northumberland to see purple sandpiper. This site can easily be joined with a trip to nearby Budle bay and has a convenient car park above the dunes at Bamburgh.
Sea duck and divers
Sometimes Purple sandpipers number over 100 and are joined by other waders including oystercatcher, turnstone and sanderling on the beach running around the tide's edge.
Offshore wildfowl numbers can be very impressive with rafts of common scoter, eider and the spectacular long-tailed duck (main picture).They are joined by good numbers of both divers and grebes with red-throated diver and slavonian grebe being the most regular.Auks to and fro accross the sea aswell as cormorant, fulmar and possible white winged gulls such as iceland or Glaucous, although they are easier to find at nearby seahouses.Excellent at any time of the year but probably at its best January - March.
The whole area is spectacular in both it's busy seabird movements but is set against the splended vistas of both the Farne islands and the majestic Bamburgh castle.
Birds you may see at Stag Rocks
An excellent seawatching site in Winter. Excellent numbers of sea duck offshore with regular grebe species (great-crested and slavonian). passage gannet and auks.
