New Raptor Watchpoint

[burhinus]

New this year anyway!

Great Ryburgh, Norfolk. Good views of Honey Buzzard, Common Buzzard, Hobby, Sparrowhawk, Goshawk, and more.

Has anyone been ? any comments?

burhinus

[burhinus]

Seems I must be the only person to have visited this one. Has anyone else got a raptor watchpoint closeby. What have you seen?

burhinus

[burhinus]

Hi Alan

Sounds very good for a garden. I envy you. I do get regular Sparrowhawk in my garden. Have had Common Buzzard and Marsh Harrier over but not often.

I think we should be having a forum for garden birds soon. Seems like you should have some good postings for it.

Cheers burhinus

[Colin]

burhinus,
Yes, I have been there this year and I found it to be very good. Plenty of raptors around including Honey Buzzard although I had to wait maybe an hour for this species.
The initial difficulty I had was finding the place. I discovered that the locals have no sense of distance. 'Just around the corner' means, 'go around the corner and continue for 3 miles!!'. I also asked directions from a very sweet, little old lady who was tending her cottage garden in the middle of nowhere. Her directions turned out to be spot on but at the time, I couldn't understand a word that she said because she had an amazingly strong Norfolk accent!!

Colin

[burhinus]

Welcome to Norfolk Bor!

You summed the locals up pretty well there Colin. They are nice guys and gals really.

burhinus

[StarainBoy]

Are there any formal raptor watchpoints in the UK where people count the birds passing? The Americans seem to be big on this and I think there are also such sites in Europe. Perhaps we don't get enough of a migration to make it worthwhile?

[Michael Frankis]

Hi Starain,

Because of Britain's mild winters, most of our raptors are resident as they don't need to migrate. The only migratory species are fairly scarce: Osprey, Honey-buzzard, Montagu's Harrier and Hobby (summer visitors) and Rough-legged Buzzard (winter). These five also happen to be species which tend to migrate on a broad front, not concentrating at particular points. The final problem is that large raptors don't like to cross water: the North Sea is too wide for raptors to cross comfortably, so by and large, they don't.

There are some far better raptor migration points further east in Europe, where the continental climate means winters are much colder, forcing birds to migrate more. The famous ones are:
Falsterbo, at the southwest tip of Sweden
The Bosporus at Istanbul, on the crossing from Europe to Asia between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean
Southern Israel, the crossing from SW Asia to Africa

Michael

[robinm]

We went to Gt Ryburgh a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, as we were on our way somewhere, we only had about an hour there. But in that time we had excellent views of 3 honey buzzard including the male doing his wing clapping display.

Definitely worth a visit.