timmyjones
Well-known member
We woke up at 3 o'clock yesterday morning and after gathering a few vital possessions quickly got on out way. Our destination Norfolk (that's if it wasn't completely flooded by all the rain we've been having!) After a quick 2.5hr car ride we arrived at Lakenheath nice and early at 5:30am. We checked to see if the visitor center was open but it obviously wasn't so we quickly set off towards the 2nd plantation where there had been several reports of golden orioles in there. As we set off along the footpath we heard the yodeling cranes, magnificent but they sounded like they were in an area where we couldn't see so we carried on towards the orioles. As we walked alongside the river we could hear loads of cuckoos, reed warblers and a grasshopper warbler which we couldn't locate. We carried on up for 35mins or so until we reached the second plantation. We had been told that they had a nest in there but our only instructions were to look for the crowd, not very helpful at 6 o'clock in the morning. So we walked along the side of the second plantation checking every now and then to see if we could spot the orioles. As we were approaching the end of the plantation we were starting to loose our confidence of whether or not we would be able to locate the nest and it seemed more and more unlikely as we went on. Until rather cleverly my dad noticed that we had jut walked over and area of grass where it had been quite clearly trampled down like there had been a lot of birdwatchers standing there, this seemed like the only clue that we could find as to the location of the nest so we stopped here and started searching. We looked all over the part where we were standing but it didn't help that there was a half fallen down tree obscuring the view. As we kept searching we heard the male sing a couple of notes of his melodic song and this continued about every 15mins or so we would hear the male call presumably to his young as he was approaching the nest. Then my dad raised his binoculars to start scanning again and by fluke managed to get straight onto a male oriole. After watching it hop down a couple of branches my dad lowered his binoculars to try and guide me onto the bird but as soon as he did so he realised that he couldn't make out where the bird had previously been so deep in the woods. So he raised his binoculars again to see if he could find it but only saw it drop out of view. Had I just missed the first lifer of the day! We continued to search and again my dad raised his binoculars and this time he was on to a female but she quickly disappeared out of view. Had I missed them yet again! After searching for them for over 1.5hrs we decided to cut loose and see if we could get anymore precise directions to the nest from the visitor centre. So as we started out walking back to the visitor centre we heard a call come from within the plantation. It was a sparrowhawk and so me and my dad stopped and turned to see if we could see the bird and sure enough we turned to see the sparrowhawk come out of the plantation, and it was been mobbed by a marvelous sparkling male GOLDEN ORIOLE. He followed the sparrowhawk sightly out of the plantation then flew back then went back again as the sparrowhawk looked to turn round and go back into the woods so the male came back out to dive bomb it again in the process gaining excellent view of a dramatic bird. Fantastic. The walk back to the car park wasn't so bad and felt like I floated all the way to the car. Magical.
