September and October 2017 a few highlights

Autumn was really quiet in NW Norfolk this year and as I write this just before Christmas I can't recall last time time the wind switched to the east for more than a couple of hours. So that's my excuse for not blogging for a few months.

However having just had a quick look through my photo files on the PC I clearly have been out a fair bit and seen some interesting stuff, so here are a few highlights from September and October.

Amethyst Deceiver, Ken Hill Woods

I really know very little about Fungi but this small purple one caught my eye in Ken Hill Woods and it turns out that the Amethyst Deceiver is a distinctive and well known species.

"Falling leaf", Ken Hill Woods 

Another lunchtime walk with my old Pansonic Lumix TZ30 and I thought it would be fun to try and capture images of falling leaves. This little compact camera isn't up to the job of focusing on leaves tumbling through the air but it can take pictures of leaves caught mid fall on the thinnest of gossamer threads and left dangling in mid air over the path. Even with a suspended target this was still a remarkably difficult picture to take. 

Bearded Tot, Digiscoped at Titchwell

Water Rail, Digiscoped at Titchwell

The pictures of a male Bearded Tit and a Water Rail were both taken on the same morning from the Island Hide at Titchwell by hand holding by Lumix TZ30 to the eyepiece of my Kowa scope with the camera set to macro mode and then zoomed out. Nice if soft pictures that don't blow up to well.

Grey Squirrel, Rosary Cemetery Norwich

Sanderling, Gore Point

Turnstone, Hunstanton

During the autumn I found myself returning to some of my photographic obsessions. I have been visiting the Rosary Cemetery in Norwich at lunchtime for over a decade. These days I visit less often mainly because I now use my lunch breaks to go swimming and fight the flab. But I do still get out sometimes with my TZ30 and managed the shot above of one of the resident squirrels, I like to give a feel for the location of the pictures I take here and having a squirrel on a gravestone with a striking inscription is one way of doing this.

It would be odd if living on the coast I wasn't interested in shorebirds and this summer I developed a interest in taking photographs of Sanderling feeding on the same beaches my children were playing on.  Using and old Canon 100 - 300 lens and EOS 400 body I was able to inch forwards in my swimming trunks at eye level with the birds and you can see here how they push the sand in front of their bills and see why their old English name is Sand Plough. 

Turnstone's are great waders,often approachable, adaptable and striking to look at, I know that if all else fails me I can go to the beach in Hunstanton and photograph Sanderling most months of the year. This picture was taken in a short session one evening and I like the way it captures a little of the birds movement and character.

Red Backed Shrike, Heacham

Black Necked Grebe, Snettisham

Osprey, Holkham Park

I haven't seen any rares this autumn but I did manage to luck onto a few scarce migrants. The Red Backed Shrike was a post work Twitch to the northern end of the coastal park. The Black Necked Grebe similarly another after work twitch this time to the pits at Snettisham. We "found" the Osprey fishing on Holkham Park Lake during a family visit and enjoyed watching it plunging into the lake several times before being chased off by an Osprey.

Hobby, Holkham Pines

A family walk at Holkham Pines was enlivened by this Hobby hunting Dragonflies over our heads as we walked along the edge of the pines. 

Participating in the Yellow Browed Warbler invasion

For the past few weeks the UK has been inundated [well there have been rather a lot] with Yellow Browed Warbler's and I had seen precisely none this year. So it was wonderful this morning to have a chance to go birding with my mate Jim along the north Norfolk coast.

Yellow Browed Warbler, Brancaster

We headed to Brancaster Staithe, our plan was simply to walk the boardwalk back west towards Brancaster and bird the hedgerows and trees that border it. Initially this seemed like a bad call, although there were birds about the wind was keeping them down and those that there were always seemed to have the sun behind them. But then we reached Branodunum, not the housing estate but the field owned by the National Trust and surrounded by a nice sheltering hedgerow, soon we heard our first Yellow Browed Warbler here and although we couldn't pin this bird down we started to feel lucky.

Yellow Browed Warbler, Brancaster

Walking into the north west corner of the field I picked up a a Phylosc in the top of a tree and Jim and I called it simultaneously as a Yellow Browed, soon we had two of these flitting around and calling giving good if always brief views.

Leaving Branodunum we headed back to the car at Brancaster Staithe with the pinging of Bearded Tits accompanying us. A couple of Red Kites drifted overhead and a Peregrine shot through with the sun behind it as it hunted the marsh. We also saw Common Buzzard and Marsh Harrier here.

Not seeing the Red Breasted Flycatcher at Titchwell

Titchwell was busy, very busy. We spent a while not seeing the Red Breasted Flycatcher but getting brief views of a Pied Flycatcher. On the Fen Trail we heard but didn't see a couple of YBW's and we saw a Common Redstart in a hedge near Patsy's Pool. Walking down the West Bank path expecting a tough time finding the Pectoral Sandpiper we were pleased to find it staked out right by the side of the path, it spent a lot of time in cover only ever giving brief views, often of its back.

Pied Flycatcher, Titchwell

Heading home we picked up a Sparrowhawk being mobbed by Jackdaws,  which meant five species of BOP in a morning and no Kestrel.

Pectoral Sandpiper, Titchwell

All in all a great four hours birding, the best bit being the time Jim and I had a prime bit of east coast habitat to ourselves along with a couple of Yellow Browed's. I love the sense of being able to say not only did I clap eyes on these birds but that I also shared the communal experience of this years invasion of this tiny little warblers. Just as last year it was great to share in that amazing period at Holkham when the bushes were full of rares and birders from across the UK came together to join in the fun. Not that today was all plain sailing whilst giving the kids their tea I had a quick look at BirdGuides Norfolk page on my mobile phone only to discover that a Black Browed Albatross had flown past Old Hunstanton, maybe half a mile as the Albatross flies from my kitchen, ho bloody hum.

Weekend Birds

Late Swallow brood

Saturday was wet here in north west Norfolk. I needed to visit the garage in Brancaster and took advantage of the opportunity afterwards to sit in my car in the harbour for an hour watching the tide slowly rise and the rain drops pit the surface of the water. Almost the first birds that I saw and heard on arrival were a couple of Greenshank's manically feeding around the edges of the harbour, every few minutes taking flight and landing in a new feeding location where they resumed their buy scything of the shallow water before taking flight again.

Greenshank's

A Little Egret fed reasonably close inshore catching small fish that seemed from my perspective to be barely worth the effort that it had to put into catching them. As the rain eased a number of Swallows flew west and Spoonbill circled over the saltmarsh to the east.

Little Egret

Sunday and the sun was back out and we went to our beach hut in the sand dunes to the east of Brancaster beach. Here a late brood of swallows sat spilling out of their nest in the eaves of neighbours beach hut whose decking sported a large pile of swallow crap. Next door a Common Lizard sunned itself. In the scrub a Willow Warbler shared a bush with the local House Sparrows and Wheatear sat up in a gable end.

Willow Warbler

The  sea was still relatively warm and the visibility was the best I've ever known it. Off shore there were still Sandwich Terns albeit in reduced numbers and solitary Great Crested Grebe, Red Breasted Merganser and Guillemot.

Wheatear

Its weekends like this that remind me of why I choose to live where I do, the opportunity it affords me to raise my children by the sea, spend quality time with them in great locations and to live in a bird rich and dynamic part of the world.

A couple of visits to Titchwell

I've had the last week as leave from work and have packed a lot into the ten or so days out of the office including a couple of visits to the RSPB's Titchwell Marsh nature reserve. Unusually for me these were not rushed visits and I had time to properly "bird" the site.

Titchwell at dusk

The Fresh Marsh is alive with birds at the moment, last night I counted 21 Spoonbills here, some doing what Spoonbills do best standing around sleeping, others wading through the shallows feeding. Alongside the Spoonbills were 35 Little Egrets [an under estimate].

Common Tern at Titchwell

Wader diversity hasn't been at it's highest but even so between my two visits I saw large numbers of Avocets and Black Tailed Godwits, Redshanks, Spotted Redshank, Dunlin, Little STint, Common Sandpiper, Lapwing, Golden Plover Oystercatcher, Ruff, Curlew, Whimbrel, Little Ringed Plover.

Black Tailed Godwit at Titchwell

A Hobby dashed through chasing a small wader high up into the sky over the Fresh Marsh before the waders determination to save its life saw it tire out the Falcon and then escape.

Ruff at Titchwell

Bearded Tits can be easily heard at the moment and smalls flocks of juveniles are much in evidence.

Juvenile Bearded Tits at Titchwell

This autumn just keeps on giving: Bluetail, Issy Shrike and Pallas's Warbler

I watched the amazing fall of migrants along the north Norfolk coast unfold not in the field but one step removed on the Internet on the BirdGuides website and various blogs, pictures and accounts of  a stellar cast of eastern rares. Work and a child with a stomach bug got in the way of experiencing any of the birds first hand until Friday when finally I could no longer resist and I took the morning off and drove along the coast road to Holkham.

My plan was to walk quickly to where the Red Flanked Bluetail was located down by the Cross Tracks at the Western end of the Pines in some Sallows and then work my way back east spending more time looking at the Goldcrests in the hope of pulling out a Pallas's or Yellow Browed Warbler. And of course the Isabeline Shrike that was present as well, I knew I wouldn't have time for Wells Wood and the goodies on show there.

Grab shot of Red Flanked Bluetail at Holkham

As I walked I could constantly hear Goldcrests and my planned brisk walk slowed as I paused to look at these. Over head there were flocks of newly arrived Redwings calling in flight. I walked past the small trail for the Bluetail and re-traced my steps with another birder who had done likewise. Arriving round the back of the Sallows I joined a small congregation and the bird quickly showed posing for a second , just long enough for me to admire its deep bluetail before disappearing from view. I stayed for an hour and had a couple more equally brief but worse views before tearing myself away.

Next stop was the Shrike which had apparently been showing well earlier, it wasn't when I arrived in its favoured area and it was only when another birder came and fetched me that I got 0onto it feeding along a scrubby ditch line out on the grazing marsh. That was my lot and I needed a brisk walk back to the car and then home for an afternoon of office work.

Isabeline Shrike [and Redwing] digi-scoped through an very old Nikon ED Scope

But I still had a Pallas's Warbler sized itch to scratch, I'd not seen one for a few years and I didn't want to miss the opportunity that this autumn provided, so today I managed to get out for a couple of hours in the afternoon and headed to Holme where a bird had been reported. Getting directions to the area of The Forestry [sea Buckthorn and Sallow scrub] the bird was in I didn't feel overly confident but I got myself in the right area and a couple of birders put me onto where the bird had last been seen. They left me on my own and I managed to pish the bird out very briefly, what a beauty my favourite bird of the autumn, like a Goldcrest dipped in Sherbet that crown strip and yellow rump, yowser! I set the camera on its maximum ISO setting and grabbed a few shots which I have heavily cropped here.

Pallas's Warbler at Holme

Essence of autumn at Holme: Yellow Browed's and a Firecrest

A busy weekend of chauffeuring to and from children's birthday parties, shopping and a trip to the swimming pool with number one son. But by late afternoon on Sunday I managed to find a couple of hours clear to make the short drive along the coast road from Hunstanton to Holme where some of the influx of Yellow Browed Warblers had been reported on BirdGuides.

Yellow Browed Warbler at Holme NWT

Getting down to the The Firs at 4.30pm I chose to park in the NOA car park, I wandered over to a couple of birders staring hard at a Poplar tree and within a few minutes I had my first fleeting glance of the afternoon of a Yellow Browed Warbler, after a few minutes I had seen this bird reasonably well and taking the birders advice wandered over to the sycamores behind the NWT car park where three Yellow Browed's and a Firecrest had been showing well.

Positioning myself on the sunny side of the Sycamores with a stunted Horse Chestnut all burnt brown leaves in front of them I quickly got onto a flicker in the canopy and soon had good scope views of a Yellow Browed which even posed long enough for a usable but poor quality digiscoped image.

Firecrest in Sycamore at Holme NWT

With time pressing I headed back to the car pausing on the car park side of the Sycamores where within a couple of minutes I was getting good views of a wonderful Firecrest and even managed a couple of so so snaps of this. Soon a Yellow Browed appeared and I managed some much better shots with my DSLR. As I watched a Green Sandpiper called in the distance and I reflected that this quick hour out was in many ways the essence of autumn birding distilled: a warm still blue sky October afternoon, staring into a clump of coastal sycamores, looking for eastern vagrants.

Take a Butcher's

Great Grey Shrike, Burnham Deepdale

Butcher's is short for Butcher's Hook which is Cockney rhyming slang for Look, so take a Butcher's means take a look. Shrikes are known as Butcher birds due to their habit of impaling their prey on thorn bushes. Hence this blog's title.

Been loads of Shrikes along the east coast this past week, I lucked into this bird as I drove home from work this evening. Crap picture of a great bird.

Gulls - Large & Small

Immature Herring Gulls, The Wash, Hunstanton

A pattern is beginning to slowly emerge, the kids are still both demanding and rewarding, but as no2 son heads towards his second birthday small windows of time are more regularly coming my way and I am choosing to spend them below the cliffs at the end of our road in Hunstanton. I say "choosing" in some ways I am lucky that the nearest open space to our home is a stretch on beach facing onto the Wash, doubly lucky as I don't really have the time yet to travel further afield.

And so I sense that I have re calibrated my expectations has to what is a good or interesting sighting, in one sense this reminds me of patch watching in London in the 80's when what constituted a rarity was defined by its status in north London. So too now I am taking pleasure from the birds I am managing to winkle out on my short visits to the base of the cliffs.

Today having persuaded no1 son [age 4] to join me I had 40 minutes mid afternoon under the cliffs just as the tide dropped. A large flock of young Herring Gulls hung in the air below the sea wall looking to snatch starfish that had been swept onto the shore by the receding tide. Offshore a steady passage of immature Gannets headed for the mouth of the Wash and I think I saw 30+, a few Turnstones, Oystercatchers and Bar Tailed Godwits flew past low over the choppy waves and a trio of Red Breasted Mergansers. But my best bird was a stunning winter plumaged adult Little Gull, wonderful dark underwings and white trailing edges. I got a lot of satisfaction for picking this small gull out as it flew by low over the grey sea.

Arctic Skua beating up terns



Arctic Skua, Hunstanton Beach

I managed a great 45 minutes under the cliffs in Hunstanton this afternoon. Lovely late autumn sunshine and a turning tide. Gull numbers are pickimg up and there were lots of Herring Gulls, a few Black Heads and Common Gulls and a single Great Black Backed but no Fulmars. Way offshore 20+ Gannets plunge dived into the Wash and closer in 4 Sandwich Terns fed. Shorebirds included Bar Tailed Godwits, Redshanks and Turnstones.

Best bird though was the pictured Arctic Skua which I picked up resting on the sea and which would every so often take flight to beat up the Sandwich Terns.

Autumn Birds at Titchwell

Although I only live a few miles along the coast its been a while since I've visited Titchwell Marsh, so it was great to be able to spend a couple of hours there walking and talking with some work colleagues and do a bit of gentle spotting at the same time.

What struck me most of all was that the site was just hooching with birds. On the Fresh Marsh migrating waders fed within a few feet of the path, Wigeon grazed the islands and Bearded Tits called from within the reedbeds.

Greenshank, Titchwell Marsh, Norfolk

For me the first of two highlights of my visit were a flock of 17 Greenshanks picked up on call flying in at height from the west and slowly circling and descending low over the marsh whilst still calling, something very enigmatic about the sight and sound of this flock of birds on a north Norfolk Marsh in the autumn.

The second highlight were the wild geese. On the Fresh Marsh a flock of 20 Brent Geese were the first I have seen this autumn and the wink wink calls of a skein of Pink Footed Geese alerted me to 15 - 20 birds flying over again my first of the autumn.

Other great birds seen included a Snow Bunting, a couple of Curlew Sandpipers, a Little Stint and Spotted Redshank, as well as some splendid looking Little Egret's. All in all a very pleasant couple of hours.

Little Egret, Titchwell Marsh, Norfolk

Pictures taken with Panasonic Lumix TZ30 and cropped.