Norfolk '09, take two, post two

What? it's a bird like any other.

Apologies in advance for the epically sized post, but as promised, here's more about the Norfolk trip. Especially as one blogger has already stated my previous post was "woefully inadequate" or whatever his wording was...

We had pretty well a full five days away, with lengthy stops at Lakenheath on the way up and down. In between being tourists, drinking and photographing dead things we got a fair amount of birding done, mainly at places like the big "honeypot" sites for these two who were new to the game. Maybe we didn't see anything "interesting" (with one or two notable exceptions) and we certainly found nothing worthy of writing home about, but the major benefit of not being a hideously over-experienced birder is that things like marsh tit are still fucking exciting. I reckon between us we made 113 species. Again, not amazing for 5 days in Norfolk in May but about 20 more than I'd expected we'd get. We even missed a fair few "easy" species I'd have expected to find: spotshank, nightingale, lesserthroat, garden warbler, peregrine, greatspot (!), garganey, gropper, turtle dove, yellow and grey wag, kingfisher... We didn't follow through on rough plans to hunt dotterel round Choseley or nightjars at any heathland but I'm really not complaining, I'll get them eventually. I came away with four life ticks - the other benefit of inexperience is that this occurs relatively frequently - and perhaps a further 9 year ticks.

The first evening we spent mostly at the pub - The White Horse at Brancaster Staithe - on the balcony, freezing our tits off on the balcony so we could lazily bird the marsh, while drinking heavily to offset the temperature. This was surprisingly productive given the distances, the light levels and the alcohol - avocet, brent goose, blackwits, redshank and marsh harrier all showed. The campsite itself yielded a few trip-ticks in the shape of willow warblers, coal tit, dunnock and later in the evening barn and tawny owls.

Cley was pretty quiet in terms of numbers of species. A single bittern boomed once but the spoonbill was nowhere to be seen, and while we were able to pick out four or so teal in the distant heat haze we were unable to make out the green-winged from either the hides or the beach. (I was later informed both birds were "dross and horseshite" not to be bothered with and that my life list is set to go down when they finally re-lump GW and Eurasian). Boat loads of chavocets being aggressive, a single distant LRP, snipe, blackwit and breeding lapwing/redshank were the only waders on offer until we hit the beach when two flypast sanderling and an overhead whimbrel added useful trip-ticks. There were a few sandwich terns offshore, but nothing else of interest - certainly nothing as good as this gull earlier in the year. The black swan was still present.

Photogenic bling-toting sedge warbler.


Swallows, reed bunt and lapwing. The photography was surprisingly not as crap as usual at Cley.


Brent geese - two of about 1500 we guessed at being present along the coast. Had no idea they stayed so late.

The weather was wrong for Blakeney point to provide huge rarities, and given the paltry hour long visit (damn tides) I reckon we did pretty well. Aardvark got herself onto a med-gull that the rest of us missed as the whole flock flushed over the dunes, but four tern species (little, common, arctic, sandwich), a few yawnworthy waders/passerines and a female long-tailed duck were enough compensation. The long-tail came up off the saltings inside the spit as we landed, flew over our heads and came down with a group of brents just offshore, on the landward side. Oh, and there were a few seals, too. Holkham later in the day got us marsh tit and treecreeper, both fairly common birds but still not things we see regularly round our area. A single ruddy shelduck would have been a lifer if it wasn't plastic.

Sandwich tern and sand eel.


Common seals, with one grey (the big dark one at the back, I think).


Long-tailed duck, adult female in summer plumage, we reckoned... an unexpected life tick.


Little terns. There were loads.

Titchwell in bright spring sunlight was pretty awesome. Again, nothing "scarce" even, but plenty to watch and enjoy. The bearded tits were out in force and we watched loads of the things flying about over the reeds, the ever-present marsh harriers up and about. The lagoons didn't provide little gull, med gull or even things like spotshank, but we had good views of little tern, the a variety of waders and a late drake wigeon. Summer plumaged grey plover were nice too. A brief seawatch was predictably shite with only a few gannet, a fulmar and 4 flypast unidentified ducks as the only reward for filling my scope and eyes with sand. I have suspicions the ducks were female eider - which wouldn't nearly have made up for the horizontal sand movement anyway - but they were too far out and too brief to be sure about, which really didn't make up for the sand. Or sunburn.

Little tern. I'd rather have had little gull, but beggars dole-receivers can't be choosers when it comes to small white seabirds, apparently.

Lakenheath was good both times. Lenghty searches for orioles were fruitless, but the bitterns were booming regularly and on the second trip we watched one for a good thirty seconds as it came up and flew over the marshes before circling and dipping into a reedbed. We heard the cranes calling but didn't see them, heard a single bearded tit and had at least 15 cuckoos. Raptors were represented by 5 marsh harriers and a group of 25 hobbys. Three black-terns overhead (lifer) made up for missing orioles, garganey and purple heron. Sort of.

Marsh Harrier, one of 2 female, 1 male and 2 first years we saw.

Hobbys, stupid numbers of them. We counted 25 at least.

Over the week our mammal list was also pleasing, with common and grey seals, stoat, brown hare, rabbit, muntjac, roe deer and loads of dead things. On one site, at a quote "ecologically managed" farm we found 5 dead moles, 3 dead rabbits and a clearly dead badger set along the 400 metre long head of a single field. All bodies were unpredated and since death had been left intact. I'm no expert, but I've walked miles and miles of field boundary and never seen a single mole corpse, and every time I've seen other corpses they've either been the victim of predation or been eaten after death. The only cause we can think of is poisoning, which is a bit shit given bio-accumulation of toxins and the proximity to breeding sites of a whole bunch of relatively rare birds. We also had our first damselfly of the year (a red one, with a green wedge along the rear four or so segments, with a single spot on the end of each wing) and a good selection of butterflys, including speckled wood and orange-tip. Dragon/damsel-flys and butterflys are this years project.

Back to normality - job searches, dole-queues, band rehearsals and shit birds. I reckon I'll be back in Norfolk before the year's out, if I can help it. Hopefully in Autumn. On an easterly.

Barn owl, from the side or the road near Burnham-Something-or-Other. What, a whole post without an unrecognisable blob of a photo? You think you're that lucky?

Apologies for the shittyness of this post. I'll try to write something funnier next time.