Can you ever have too many Avocet pictures?

Avocets, Frampton Marsh

I enjoyed taking this image, the marsh was full of Avocets and I was having fun trying to get pictures of them in flight. I started to try and make sense of the activity around me by focusing on single birds, but as I became more attuned to the action going on around me, I noticed that often pairs of birds would take flight together or that two or three birds would converge in the air as they chased each other away from their patch of ground.

There is something very elegant about Avocets. Their plumage the crisp lines between the black and white feathers, the long blue grey legs on which they daintily wade through muddy shallows, and that distinctive long black scimitar bill for sifting small shrimps out of the marsh.

Avocets have a suitably tragic and well known back story as a species, a history inextricably linked in with that of the RSPB who have adopted the species as their emblem in acknowledgement of the hope that their work on these birds in helping them to recover from extinction as a breeding bird in the UK. Work that gives hope to their work on other threatened birds.

By dint of where they live and also perhaps where they don't, Avocets will be associated in many birders minds with great days out in amazing places on the coast: Minsmere, Titchwell, Frampton a roll call of our best nature reserves, where today you are almost guaranteed to see these special birds. Hope made real in flesh and feathers, a Lazarus bird brought back from UK extinction and whose spread has been facilitated by the creation of new nature reserves with suitable habitat for Avocets and a range of other wetland birds.

In response to some frustrating behaviour by some photographers, I once heard an exasperated warden exclaim something along the lines of "Aren't there enough pictures of Kingfishers in the world!" Indeed sometimes when leafing through portfolios of award winning images of UK wildlife I have felt the same. But I think on reflection that misses at least part of the point. Taking pictures of Kingfishers, Avocets and a whole range of other species gives people pleasure, it gives them a sense of connection and it can give friends and family pleasure too. All of which I hope leads to a sense that these species and the places that they live are worth looking after.

Taking this picture gave me pleasure, I have taken pleasure from the reaction of others to it over on my Instagram page and I have taken pleasure from the fact that there is more to it than may be apparent on first viewing.

Looking at it I feel that the image has a balletic feel to it, the upper bird appears to be releasing the lower bird to let it swoop elegantly away, as if they were performing some avian version of Swan Lake.  And yet that isn't what was happening, this 1600th of a second moment frozen in time is not of two birds in a loving aerial dance, but of a dog fight above a east coast marsh on a mid-summer morning. The Avocets here were in a constant state of agitation, as soon as I opened my car door I was hit by a soundscape full of their kloot, kloot calls as pairs of Avocets chased away their neighbours and any other birds who had the temerity to enter their air space.

In essence they were behaving less like ballerina's and more like badly behaved super models. In doing so they were living up to their reputation as notoriously anti social birds. Thinking back I can vividly remember watching an Avocet colony on a Dutch marsh where one adult bird grabbed a neighbours chick in its delicate bill and throttled it under the water until the young birds parents flew in screaming to rescue it. In Norfolk I have watched pairs of Avocets rising to the sky to harry and chase away birds many times their size including potential predators like Grey Herons.

I witnessed these behaviours and had the chance to grab on film fractions of seconds for posterity, because sitting overlooking a marsh watching the birds, anticipating their behaviour and thinking about technically how I can grab a shot worth sharing, all that gives me pleasure. It also means for me at least that I am even more inclined to want to protect and share the places where these elegant if slightly anti-social birds thrive.

Hope, Cranes and the Lockdown

Context is hugely influential in how we experience and think about nature and 30 odd years ago for me as a young birder that meant a frame of reference formed by the London parks where I had done most of birdwatching. On this occasion though I wasn’t in London, but with a friend who lived close to the Norfolk Broads. We were standing at the end of bitterly cold and snowy winters day on the edge of the marshes with the distinctive shape of Horsey Mill behind us. A family party of Whooper Swans had just flown past, Marsh Harriers were drifting over the large reedbed and then there they were bugling as they went by a pair of Cranes. To me back then these were mythical creatures, part of a tiny population of pioneering birds recolonising this wild eastern edge of England. Soon they disappeared from view as they dropped into their night-time roost site.

So when one evening this April, several decades later and in a different corner of Norfolk, two Common Cranes appeared over the rounded slope of the arable field I was walking past, not only did I feel the excitement I always experience when seeing these majestic birds, but they also triggered memories of that first sighting in the Broads and some of the work that I have been involved in over the years with RSPB to help create places where Cranes if they so choose can live and thrive.

Lockdown Cranes, Hunstanton

The Cranes as they flew past me high and heading north were unmistakeable large grey birds with long legs and necks topped by a red heads. I had thought that given the lockdown restrictions it would be many months until I got the chance to travel into Crane country, and it was this sense of them as an unexpected and short lived treat that made this experience all the more special. The birds were soon gone, my encounter with them lasting less than a minute, time to relish the moment and grab a couple of record shots with my camera. Then once they were out of sight I sent a text to a friend who lived half a mile away suggesting they get out in their garden in case they could see them from there. The message I got back was an unhappy one, pointing out that they had walked past the same field twenty minutes earlier and no they couldn’t see or hear the Cranes from their garden.

Cranes were once a widespread bird of the British Countryside, but like so much else of our native wildlife they disappeared from the landscape and our national consciousness centuries ago, victims of hunting and habitat loss. Then something amazing occurred they found their way back. Initially this happened slowly in remote marshland in the Norfolk Broads, where pioneering birds started their nesting attempts in the late 70’s on the Horsey estate. Slowly as this population grew in size, it started to expand its range across the Broads and then into the Fens where the first Cranes to nest in this famously flat landscape in four centuries chose to do so at the RSPB’s Lakenheath Fen Nature Reserve.

Now Lakenheath Fen is an amazing place to visit hooching with life on a spring day. This is a man made landscape,  a small restoration of the once extensive wild and wet Fens that were drained for agriculture. Until they were drained the Fens were England’s great wetland, but the drainage not only sucked water out of the fens but also wildlife. Then back in the early 1990’s the RSPB’s East Anglian region team based in Norwich were looking to buy a piece of land in the Fens that could be used to create a new wetland nature reserve away from the coast and the threat of sea level rise, where species like Bitterns and Marsh Harriers could thrive. Never in their wildest dreams did they think that within a couple of decades Cranes would be nesting on the wetland they created. Following an appeal the RSPB were able to buy the land for this project at Lakenheath, land which at the time it was being used to grow carrots. To lead the task of turning 400 hectares of carrot fields into a wetland they appointed Norman Sills as warden. Norman had spent the previous couple of decades setting up the famous RSPB nature reserve at Titchwell Marsh on the north Norfolk coast and is a bit of a genius when it comes to taking a piece of land and creating a wildlife rich wetland.

Today you can take the train from Brandon past Lakenheath Fen, a journey across arable fields until you pass the reserve, a landscape of swaying reeds over which glide Marsh Harriers and if you are lucky you may catch a glimpse out of the train window of one of the reserves two pairs of Cranes.

In 2010 whilst the Cranes in eastern England, in the Fens and the Broads, were slowly building up their population a partnership called the Great Crane project made up of WWT, RSPB and Pensthorpe Conservation Trust, with major funding from Viridor Credits Environmental came together to give our wild Crane population a boost in the west of England on the Somerset Levels. Here on England’s largest area of wetland and grazing marsh, a landscape criss-crossed by dikes and marshes dotted with grazing cattle over a five year period 93 Cranes were released into the wild by the project.

Helped by nature conservation organisations, landowners and other’s Cranes have done well in England in recent decades slowly reclaiming bits of the landscape their ancestors would once have occupied. A sort of long-legged giant Canary in a coalmine, whose presence is a symbol of where landscapes are wet enough and wild enough to have these birds back. They show where, as a society, we have been able to make space for nature, not just for Cranes but for the wild ecosystem’s and nature friendly farmland on which they rely.

Last year there were an amazing 56 pairs of Cranes nesting across the UK, and although their strongholds are still in the Broads, Fens and Somerset Levels birds can be found in other areas too. At least 85% of the UK population of Cranes are found on protected sites with a third of these on RSPB nature reserves, wild places where they can breed undisturbed safe away from people.

All of which means that at a time when because of lockdown my physical horizons had shrunk to the places I can easily reach on foot from my house. I was able to stand by the side of a non-descript arable field, on the edge of the small east coast town that I call home, with a pair of Cranes briefly adding some sparkle to my daily exercise walk and for the Cranes to remind me that when people come together we can bring nature back into our landscapes and our lives.

After the Cranes have flown out of sight over the wood to my north, I scribble the record in my notebook and remember the late American writer and explorer Peter Matthiessen’s book Birds of Heaven about his journeys around the globe in search of the worlds different Crane species. In this book he coins a lovely phrase to describe those of us who like him are smitten by these elegant and enigmatic birds and the wild places where they live, he called himself and us Crainiacs, I like that.

Den Brooker - walking amongst the birds

I found out recently that my old friend Dennis Brooker died just before Christmas, a couple of months short of his 96th birthday. I first met Den 34 years ago back in 1984, when I was an impressionable 19 year old volunteer on Operation Osprey and Den was in his early 60's.

At that time the Osprey camp was still run on the model set up by George Waterson and Frank Hamilton, volunteers slept in tents and used chemical toilets. The rota was based on teams of three taking turns to guard the nest, talk to the public and do the chores around the Osprey camp and perhaps more importantly to a reasonably obsessive young birdwatcher every three days you got 24 hours off to do with as you wished. If you were lucky and had a car owner in your team this could mean birding excursions all over the Highlands.

Den Brooker outside the Osprey Hide 1984

During that first hot summer on the Ospreys I must have found myself on Den's team and I recall his easy going company, thoughtful speech and a twinkle in his eye when it came to the ladies. He was to my young mind charismatic and a bit of a unconventional role model. A social sort of a chap he was often to be found in the kitchen sipping a glass of red wine whilst helping the invariably young female cook.

Plants were Den's passion and I must have agreed to go looking for Bog Orchid's with him one day, I think I negotiated a promise out of him that we would go birding on the coast afterwards. Something which he graciously agreed to. Many years after he sent me a printed booklet of short essays his "fragments of a personal flora" I got it down the other day and re-read the account of our excursion. I had to laugh as I read his short pen portrait of me. "So one Sunday morning S and I set forth to Inverness. S was large, ginger haired, loquacious even in his sleep (we shared a bell tent), later served as Information Warden, and at that time was profoundly uninterested in plants."  Funny I have some vivid memories of that particular day out looking for what I uncharitably described as "Bogey's on a stick" After our successful botanising we headed to the coast at Burgh Head a austere Moray Coast fishing village. I vividly remember sitting on the slope of a hill overlooking the sea whilst a male Kestrel hovered for ages at eye level, then a pod of sleek battleship grey Bottle Nose Dolphins swam past close inshore, my first dolphins and I later put an elderly passer by right when he tried to tell me that they were porpoises.

Den will have been known to a large number of RSPB seasonal staff and volunteers who worked at the Osprey camp in the 80's. I wear as a badge of pride the fact that he used to refer to me along with Richard Thaxton who went onto be the RSPB Site Manager at Abernethy and Zul Bhatia who was RSPB Site Manager at Insh Marshes and then Lochwinnoch as his "young men". The passage of time means that Richard and Zul have both now retired from the RSPB, I the baby of the trio have a fair few years ahead of me yet before I stop work.

In recent years I saw little of Den but would look forward to his homemade Christmas cards usually an abstract photo of a plant accompanied by his almost indecipherable scrawl. Sometimes we'd talk on the phone and he'd tell me about his latest visit to Kew Gardens, his curiosity and lust for life still strong in his early 90's. the last call was difficult as his hearing had gone. My spell working at Titchwell coincided with Den's girlfriend being a retired lady doctor based in Cambridge and would look forward to occasionally bumping into him on the West Bank path. I still use in public talks that I give about the Norfolk Coast something he said to me on one occasion at Titchwell. "The great thing about Titchwell is that you can walk amongst the birds" A great summation of a fine place and perhaps also of Den's life walking amongst the birds.

Goldeneye, Loch Mallachie, Abernethy Forest

Lovers in the Fens

I always enjoy my all to infrequent visits to Frampton Marsh and Freiston Shore. I had a small [very small] hand in the creation of both of these RSPB nature reserves and it is great to be able to look back at the amazing progress that the team there has made to the landscape, which they have through their work filled with birds.

As I crossed the county line from Norfolk into Lincolnshire and up the chicken run which is the A16, with fast cars zooming down the invisible third middle lane on this single carriageway road, I mused on what goodies might await me, BirdGuides had suggested that the site was having a relatively quiet couple of days. On arrival I bumped into one of the wardens who told me that a pair of Black Winged Stilts had arrived that morning, perhaps birds that had been seen earlier in the week on the Humber at Blacktoft Sands or maybe the pair that had been in residence for a while at Welney.

Black Winged Stilts feeding amongst the dead stems of last years Sunflowers

First things first and a useful business meeting back at the reserve office, before heading out for a brief site visit via the pair of Stilts. The site as ever was full of birds and the Stilts had chosen a lagoon which had been left fallow last year and sown with Sunflowers, the skeletal stalks of last years flowers sticking up from the shallow water.

Black Winged Stilts bum in air, but not mating just yet, heavily cropped

I didn't have my scope with me but grabbed handful of record shots one of which is above in a heavily cropped format. The Stilts were busily feeding whilst we watched them and were later prior to their departure from Frampton seen mating.

Whilst watching the Stilts a stunning bright yellow, Yellow Wagtail put in an appearance. Back by the Visitor Centre a Goldfinch perched on a post inches from the path.

Goldfinch

A quick look at Freiston Shore was special for memories it brought back of the work we did to recreate saltmarsh here and of course the resident Tree Sparrows.

Gannet action at Bempton

A place where the sound of birds rises above and dominates the east coast wind, where the fishy smell generated by tens of thousands of defecating birds pervades the air, and where a line of white cliffs cuts out into the blue of the North Sea. The RSPB's nature reserve at Bempton Cliffs is all of these things and the most easily accessible large seabird colony in England. Each year I try and make a visit to take in the spectacle of the colony in full flow and this year I was lucky enough to spend a few hours there at the end of July.

Part of RSPB Bempton Cliffs

Tree Sparrows bounced around the bushes surrounding the new Visitor Centre where I was able to grab a welcome coffee and slice of cake. I see Tree Sparrows every year but I am not aware of anywhere in Norfolk where I live where they are so easily seen around bird feeders in and in such good numbers. I love their rich chestnut caps and the black beauty spot on their cheeks.

Tree Sparrow

Caffeinated we set off down the well made path to the cliffs, normally I visit earlier in the Spring and there was a noticeable difference in the birds on view compared to my normal mid April visits. I had to work hard to see Guillemots and Razorbills, apparently the majority of these two species of Auks had finished breeding and left the cliffs the week before, Shags too were thin on the ground. But Puffins were everywhere, on the sea, flying in front of the cliffs and perched below the viewpoints. Apparently late July is just about the best time to see Puffins at Bempton.

Bempton Puffins

But the undoubted stars of the show were the Gannets, many with well grown fluffy chicks on the rocky cliff ledges below the viewpoints, these majestic Persil white seabirds would drift along the cliff tops a few metres away from you. My travelling companion was quite overwhelmed and wanted to add the use of the sens of touch ti that of hearing, smell and sight by reaching out to hold one. Perhaps the most entertaining Gannet action was on a grassy slope near the top of the cliffs where a constant succession of birds came in and landed to grab beak fulls of grass to start the process of making next years nests.

Bempton Gannet and nesting material

All along the cliff top trail were well presented and informative hand drawn chalk boards with key facts about the seabirds. At the southernmost viewpoint I spotted one of the resident peregrines high overhead a great bird to end our walk with.

Peregrine at Bempton

Back at the Visitor Centre I graduated from my morning coffee to a afternoon Ice Cream and then the long drive home.

Natterjacklets

The clock on the old stately home that now serves as the RSPB's HQ chimes for one o'clock and the chattering of staff on their lunch time walks carries across the gravel drive that runs past a neatly mown lawn up to the large wooden double doors that lead to Reception. In the middle of the lawn is a oblong formal looking pond, but this being the RSPB HQ it doubles up as a home for wildlife and I can see a Common Darter perched on a stone and someone peering intently into the vegetation. He tells me he is looking unsuccessfully for Natterjack Toads.

Natterjacklet, The Lodge RSPB reserve

The middle of the pond is a tangle of wild plants and the water is free of fish which would otherwise predate any tadpoles. Then my companion sees one a tiny little Natterjacklet smaller than the bees coming into drink and with a distinctive yellow dorsal stripe. Once we have seen one we soon spot several more of these toadlets each one a conservation success story the Lodge reserve having been repopulated with Natterjacks with spawn from Norfolk.

Natterjacklets, The Lodge RSPB reserve

A great way to end a day of meetings and something to put a spring in my step on the walk back to the station.

Twilight Impressions of Titchwell

I popped into Titchwell Marsh yesterday evening for the last hour of light. The water levels were higher than recently raised by the heavy rain we've had here in Norfolk. It was exactly peaceful with the sound of  music carrying from the village [presumably from a wedding at one of the hotels].

Here are a few impressions of the birds and wildlife that I saw.

Constant invisible pinging of Bearded Tits coming from the reedbed as I walked down the West Bank path.

The dead trees to the east of the Fresh Marsh filling with at least 27 Little Egrets and then emptying as the birds moved to settle and disappear into in the deciduous trees behind them.

A rush of wings as the roosting Starlings are spooked into the air and then a Magpie appears underneath them and laboriously beats vertically up into the middle of the panicking flock trying to take a Starling in flight. Failing in its impersonation of a Sparrowhawk the Magpie disappears and the Starlings settle but not before the waders feeding on the patch of mud nearest to this piece of action are spooked into a precautionary flight.

Avocets "fidegetting" in the Twilight

In the twilight flocks of Avocets and Gulls get up and fly around the Marsh in what might best be called pre-roost fidgets.

Fox on Betts Marsh

As I drag myself away at about 9.15pm a Fox walks across the dried out muddy surface of Betts Marsh. It flushes a Grey Heron , the fox and Heron have a stand off, with the Fox clearly scared and wary of the Heron. I take a picture of the Fox with my camera cranked up to as mega high ISO setting. 

Spotted Redshank at dusk

Spotted Redshank's are always immaculate birds and tonight it is a pleasure to be able to watch several feeding in the shallows in front of Island Hide.

A Barn Owl, more cream than coffee in its plumage, hunts the salting between me and the setting Sun and the old pill box to the West of the reserve.

A juvenile Water Rail furtively walks along the edge of the reeds along the thin strip of mud left exposed by the raised water levels.

A wonderful evenings birding.

Mid January to early February catch up

Been a busy few weeks, so time for a quick catch up.

Sunday 18th January
I took the kids for a walk on Holme Beach, fun for them and it meant that I was able to connect with the flock of c 30 Snow Buntings that have been feeding on the saltmarsh here. Also added Sanderling and Red Breasted Merganser to the year list.

Snow Buntings at Holme

Monday 19th 
A lunchtime walk around Thorpe Marshes Norfolk Wildlife Trust reserve in Norwich. Pretty quiet so I counted the ducks, with amongst others 64 Gadwall, 27 Teal [massive under count I expect] 20 Tufted Duck and 1 Pochard and single Snipe.

Teal 

Thursday 22nd
Car Park opposite Hunstanton Tesco
With 2 Waxwings reported feeding in trees around the edge of the car park and drinking in puddles, I paused briefly on the school run to see one of these birds, probably spent less than a minute paused and looking. Had thought I'd be able to come back at leisure but these birds proved elusive and that was to be my lot.

Also added Grey Partridge to the year list today with a small Covey by the side of the A149 bringing up 100 species for the year.

Friday 23rd
A lunchtime walk around Ken Hill Wood was pretty average with a nice mixed flock of Long Tailed, Coal, Blue and Great Tits, plus Green and Great Spotted Woodpecker and Common Buzzard.

Treecreeper

Saturday 24th
A quick hour at Titchwell 
2 - 3 Marsh Harriers, a single Woodcock from Meadow Trail which I'd of gotten a better picture of if I'd not been busy helping an old girl get onto it only for her to hell her son that she couldn't use scopes. Barn Owl was a nice bonus.

Crap picture of Woodcock

Tuesday 27th
My commute between Hunstanton and Norwich today was enlivened by single Barn Owls on the morning and evening and a Little Owl on the morning drive. 

Wednesday 28th
River Yare in Norwich at Thorpe St Andrew
Tipped off by a friend I spent ten minutes looking for and another ten minutes photographing a first winter Mediterranean Gull in amongst the Black Headed Gulls on the riverbank here.

First Winter Med Gull

Friday 30th
Left the office in Norwich a little early and in the twilight I saw at least 2 and maybe 3 Tawny Owls perched by the side of the road.

Saturday 31st
Regents Park London, took the kids to London Zoo and the first birds we heard on arrival and the last on departure were feral Ring Necked Parakeets.

Sunday 8th February 
Titchwell Marsh, lovely couple of hours on a bright winters day with several year ticks including Kingfisher [saw two birds together twice], Water Pipit, Water Rail, Common Scoter and a distant Long Tailed Duck. Also good to see Stonechat and Marsh Harrier and the ducks looked great today. Yellowhammer on the drive home brought the year list to 115.

Black Tailed Godwit

Spotters one of whom never seemed to pause for breath

An afternoon at Bempton Cliffs

Gannet at Bempton

Saturday 12 April

I managed to grab a few hours at Bempton during a work visit to York this weekend/ Always a great place o visit in the Spring with an assault on the sense from the noise of the seabirds especially the Kittiwakes, the fishy smell of the seabird colony and of course the great views of Gannets.

What I was also reminded of on this visit was that Bempton also has a great supporting cast of land birds including a colony of tree sparrows nesting on and around the Visitor Centre, Corn Buntings in the cliff top fields and Peregrines on the cliffs. 

During our visit we saw all of the breeding seabirds: Gannets, Kittiwakes, Herring Gulls, Shags, Guillemot's, Razorbills, Puffin's, as well as Jackdaw's, Rock Dove's and Peregrines. We also had great views of Tree Sparrow's and Corn Bunting's. Worth noting that there are not that many Puffins nesting here and you can find yourself working quite hard to see them

Another Gannet at Bempton

A shame about the lack of a decent cafe with the food offer restricted to some long life cakes and packets of crisps served by a rather dour Yorkshire man, still I believes the RSPB have received a grant from HLF to extend and improve the Visitor Centre so hopefully the catering will improve.

Peregrine and Herring Gull having an altercation at Bempton