While my wife and others went shopping at the Metro Centre, I headed north on the A1, across to the A69 and then pulled off, parked up and walked the local lanes.
Highlights weren't birds but a) a rabbit ran across the road being pursued by a weasel b) a hare in a stubble field c) a salmon leaping on the River Tyne.
Birds included: herring gulls (numerous on fields), common buzzard (several including one being mobbed by a carrion crow), lapwing (adult and juveniles on field), mistle thrush (c.10 on ploughed field), kestrel (in flight being mobbed by a carrion crow).