Sap starting to rise: Monday 10 to Monday 17 February

A relatively quiet first part of the week with the highlight perhaps being a Barn Owl in my headlights near Heacham, as I returned home from Norwich one evening.

Common Buzzard

A drive around the back roads on Sunday 16th was enlivened by two Common Buzzards drifting low over the car whilst no 2 son took his afternoon nap in the back. But the highlight of this drive was a couple of Brown Hare's that I spotted in a roadside field, normally these would have run off the moment I stopped the car but they had their minds on other things and I had a great five minutes watching them chase and box around the field, the sun even came out for a short while. You can see a few more pictures from this session on my Flickr page.

Another feature of the weekend was noticing for the first time in ages Skylarks in full song, a great sign that as the days draw out we are inexorably moving towards Spring.

Boxing Brown Hares

Today was taken up with a family outing to Wells Beach, all very quiet for birds although it was nice to hear a Little Grebe 'laughing' on the boating Lake where a male Goldeneye was great to see.

Shags on Hunstanton Cliffs at dusk

This evening I managed a walk at dusk under Hunstanton Cliffs, highlights were a pair of Red Breasted Merganser on the sea, c 350 Brent Geese over, lots of Fulmars on the cliffs, plus four Shags sitting on the sea that one by one took off into the wind and circled round over the sea before landing on the Cliffs to roost. As I headed home , in a bit of a hurry kids to bath, I flushed Peregrine which landed on a rocky bluff and allowed me to take some very grainy and distant pictures with the compact camera I had in my pocket. A nice end to the day.

Grainy, distant, slightly blurry shot of a Peregrine on Hunstanton Cliffs

Hunstanton Shags & Fulmars

Yesterday was an unexpectedly lovely winter blue sky day and even more unexpectedly I managed an hour and a half away from family duties to take a walk under the cliffs at the end of our road.

Not sure what I'd been expecting to see and I was pleasantly surprised by the number of Fulmars hanging around the cliffs either sitting on the flat calm waters of The Wash, flying over head or sat on the cliffs themselves. They were incredibly vocal and their calls, which I always feel sound a bit like a Geiger counter filled the air.

Fulmars, Hunstanton Cliffs

Apart from the Fulmars I'm inclined to say that it was the usual suspects with Turnstones, Redshanks and Bar Tailed Godwits feeding on the foreshore and Herring, Common and Black Headed Gulls present on reasonable numbers. Off shore were Great Crested Grebe and a couple of fly by Red Breasted Mergansers. Noticeable by their absence were any Brent Geese, but perhaps the beach was just a little too busy for them today.

I also managed to see four or five Shags, a two or three feeding just offshore and a couple more roosting on the cliffs. I had been told about the big Shag roost on the cliffs earlier in the winter and knew that this had peaked at over 100 birds but family commitments had prevented me going to look for them and to be honest I'd forgotten about the fact that they were still there. So it was a special treat to finally catch up with what has been a record breaking assemblage of these birds in Norfolk, albeit only a few of the many birds that had been present and to take a few pictures.

Shag, Hunstanton Cliffs