One of the most fantastic birding days EVER!!!
Today's plan was to meet my friend Pete and see shorelark at Cley, manderin duck at Felbrigg and various other birds, but plans got changed very dramatically!
I arrived at
NOA Hempton, nr Fakenham (next to Sculthorpe Moore) at just before 9am and saw a little egret, chaffinches, dunnocks, blue and great tits and a blackbird. Didn't even see a marsh tit here, never mind willow tit - never mind.
Then I realised I had to put my foot down a bit! and got to
Cley Visitor Centre carpark at 10.05am to meet Pete. From the carpark we watched a
marsh harrier skydancing and a
stonechat sat in a bramble opposite the other side of the road. It had been raining and dull skies when I left King's Lynn and now the sun was full out. After this we watched
2 Dartford warblers together on a yellow gorse bush in the sunshine, absolutely stunning!!! Just before this Pete's pager bleeped and Pete very excitedly said 'White Spotted Bluethroat, Winterton'!!!!!!!!!! we waited to see the Dartfords, which I found very very quickly, about 3 minutes after pager went off!!! and then went
.
We parked by
Winterton Church and walked through the allotments, which were full of birds, lots of housesparrows, greenfinches, goldfinches, robins, hedgesparrows, starlings - lots of birds zipping about all over the place. Turned west at end of path and walked/waded through massive puddles and squelchy mud to the gorse lined ditch. There were about 20 people there and Ben (who works at RSPB Titchwell) said he had been waiting 2 1/2 hours to see it - Pete and I turn and up and the
White Spotted Bluethroat appeared straight away - 12.25pm (I am lucky like that, the same thing happened with the Little Bittern at Titchwell last year!) I just couldn't believe what I was seeing it was just so stunning, the colours were amazing. The white spot in the middle of the vivid blue chest was just magical. It showed off incredibly! Flying from the gorse down to the watercress in the watery ditch and sometimes on the grassy bank opposite, fluffing himself up as if to say 'look at me, you ain't gonna get much better than this'!!!!! Pete summed it up perfectly afterwards - shellshocked! I have seen a bluethroat, many, many years ago at Holme, I was very young, maybe about 12, something like that and have not seen one since, until today. My b****y scope is still at Nikon (5 weeks this Sat) otherwise I would have been able to digiscope it. I tried desperately to hold my camera up against binocular lens - it wouldn't work, never mind! A greenwoodpecker called as we stood there. I could have stood there all day watching that, but we decided to move on. As we walked back through the allotments, we dipped on the
black redstart, it was in the churchyard/allotment area somewhere but we couldn't find it! Nice to meet you
Firefox by the way! - hope you had good views? Bumped into Ruralchill aswell (2 days in a row now!)
Went to car to eat our sandwiches and have a cuppa and then moved on along coast road through
Horsey. Saw some greylags, canada geese, egyptian geese and 2 marsh harriers at
Martham Ferry area and stopped every so often to scan for cranes etc, but didn't see any. We stopped and had a look round
Waxham Gap to see the
black redstart there and dipped on that as well! Just before Waxham we saw a
Ringtail Hen Harrier flying inland being mobbed by carrion crows. At
Waxham gap we saw 2 long tailed tits, robins, lots of house sparrows and greenfinches and chaffinches around farm area.
At
Walcott we watched
8 turnstones on the sea wall. A few herring gulls and lots of black headed gulls were on the beach.
Back at
Cley Visitor Centre we watched a
barn owl hunting over the marshes along with
2 marsh harriers sitting on bushes out on the marsh.
On route back to
Holt another
barn owl. Had vege burger and chips in Holt and then I left to go back to King's Lynn and had another
barn owl on the way back!
Not bothered about dipping on 2 black redstarts being as I have just seen a stonking
White Spotted Bluethroat!!!
Best Wishes Penny:girl:
