Marion suggested before Christmas that we could celebrate my birthday with a long weekend in Norfolk and although it wasn't packed with rare birds I reckoned there would be plenty to do, so we booked three nights at a B&B in Wells-next-the-Sea. They are birder-friendly and in addition to rooms in the main house have an annexe in the back garden which makes coming and going at all hours less tiptoey. The website is
www.boxwood-guesthouse.co.uk if you are interested. Wells makes a good base for birding North Norfolk, being about in the middle of the coast and just big enough to have several pubs (the Crown and the Globe on the Buttlands being particularly good) and other places to eat out/spend an evening: as a winter bonus you are treated to masses of Pinkfeet overflying the B&B morning and evening (well 24/7 really) as they move from fields to coast and back. Thoroughly recommended.
8 January (my birthday). We drove up early Thursday morning and kicked off with a cup of tea waiting for Golden Pheasants at Wolferton. We heard a couple but they didn't come out. At one point Marion went "There's one" as she picked up a movement just in front of the car but the head that emerged was a Muntjac (year tick). It froze and ducked back, and after moving away vented its displeasure with a series of harsh barks.
We moved on to Hunstanton and then Titchwell, knocking off various common waders and the few wildfowl I hadn't picked up locally. While I was sitting hull-down watching a pair of Goldeneye on the beach pools drift closer, I heard a woman's voice dimly down the wind saying "Weasel". I was up and running in that direction (to the consternation of the Goldeneye) instantly. She had seen "a Weasel or a Stoat" running down the main path away from us. As she told me and her husband this, it reappeared, still bounding away, and I legged it after it with a total absence of fieldcraft.
Stopping about where I had seen it once again dive into the long grass, I caught my breath and began squeaking with pursed lips. In seconds I was face to face with a Weasel standing on its hind legs to see where the noise was coming from and I tried to continue squeaking as my camera started clicking. Being short of breath and full of cold didn't help my photography skills but I got a couple of reasonable shots of the little bundle of dynamite before it whipped round and dived into the grass like a kingfisher into water.
When Maz asked me late yesterday, I nominated that as sighting of the trip.
Later in the day we clocked three Grey Partridges near Choseley Barns, a Peregrine at Holkham and a pair of Tawny Owls outside the B&B among a day total of 85 species of bird. The only other mammal was a Grey Squirrel at Wolferton - the absence of Rabbits from view was commented on throughout the weekend until we hit the Royston bypass on the way home, where there were dozens.
9 January. First objective today was Sculthorpe Moor, but en route we were distracted by a Barn Owl that Maz spotted on a SLOW DOWN sign. By the time we had slowed down, turned round, changed seats and organised the camera it had flown, but luckily I spotted it crossing a field to a side road and we relocated it on another road sign. It proved very approachable and Maz drifted the car quietly up within about ten yards for full frame pix of it as it intently followed the movements of a Field Vole in rank grass and roadside weeds. I know it was a Field Vole as I saw it dangling from the owl's feet, but I am sure it was dead by then so no year tick.
Unfortunately the dank, cold weather didn't generate the mammals we hoped for at Sculthorpe Moor, but showy Water Rail, Marsh Tit (beware local Great Tit that does great imitation: no year-ticking on call here!) and Brambling were nice.
We moved on to Salthouse for the first-winter Glaucous Gull and found it eating a Red-throated Diver and being sketched by a local artist. We waited for about an hour and a half for his hands to freeze too much to work, then I could push in closer to get pictures of the gull. Not great but decent record shots. We left it sitting on the beach with other gulls, after also watching a Common Seal, that had been hauled out near Kelling and been pushed off by rising tide, swim past us. A massive passage of Red-throated Divers included a few others and a Great Northern was a good year tick for me.
10 January. A bitter frost and rising wind combined to produce a very harsh morning though the countryside was picturesque with heavy frost even on large trees persisting more or less all day. Two Corn Buntings in a flock of fifty plus Yellowhammers on the Ringstead Road from Burnham Market to Choseley livened things up and we then went for another look at Titchwell. Knot, two Whoopers and a Woodcock by the fen trail were added to the bag, the last two species courtesy of Tony Gray whose directions were inch perfect.
We finished the day at Wells quay watching the Pinkfeet fly out to the saltmarsh to roost and also seeing a male Merlin chop a Meadow Pipit effortlessly (the hapless pipit just climbed vertically from the ground and was taken in mid-air with just a couple of casual wing-flaps and a zoom climb: no chase at all).
11 January. We drove round to East Norfolk after Cranes and so on, dropped into Hickling just to recce the route (I'd never done that side, always been a Horsey man) and then had a search of the fields between there and Horsey, without success. As we repeated the exercise in the other direction without the sun in our eyes, we found a couple of birders with a scope up and of course they had four Cranes in a distant ploughed field. With the pressure off we enjoyed a Sunday roast at the Old Hall Inn before driving back round to Hickling for a session at the Stubb Mill raptor watchpoint.
I enjoyed that very much, with 23 Marsh Harriers and up to four Hen Harriers including a male, swirling about over the reeds. I enjoyed it even more when another birder there spotted the Ross's Goose transiting from field to field with a big bunch of Pinks and we all got progressively closer views of the vagrant (committees? what committees?).
To top the day and the trip off, on the walk back in the deep dusk we found a Chinese Water Deer - probably a female, no obvious tusks - grazing in a stubble field. It wandered towards us rather than away and with the camera set to ISO1600 and full belt from the Speedlite 580 I got a decent record shot at about fifty yards (according to the distance marks on the lens).
Traffic wasn't too bad on the way home and we were in by 2000 hours to catch the end of the darts final.
John
