Off east after a leisurely breakfast and we wended our way
along the coast all the way to Weybourne Beach where the Glaucous Gull had
already had his morning fisherman feed and gone west towards Cley. Not to worry, it was bright but very windy
and we slogged a little way along the shingle to shelter in the lee of the
lowest remaining cliff section which gave us a good spot to scan the sea for
life.
It was a very productive our with
a flock of Scoter shining in the sun not too far out. All were female/immature types bar one silky
black drake and they were joined for a while by a very white headed Long-tailed
Duck that may have been a young male. It
eventually flew back along the coast flashing black underwings while the same
feature was visible on the two Little Auks that whirred west. I know that a few had been around but was
very pleased none the less to encounter these two. A single Guillemot was the only other auk and
we also saw ab adult Gannet, two Red-throated Divers and a selection of Gulls
that were mainly made up of Great Black-backs and hulking Northern Herring
Gulls along with a pristine 1w Caspian Gull.
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| Great Black-backed Gull |
A few Meadow Pipits, Rock Pipits and Skylarks were coming in
off and several skeins of Pink-feet came in from the east and I wondered if
these were birds re-orientating after Storm Benjimen?
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| Pink-feet |
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| Pink-feet |
The chance of a Shorelark took us up the cliff and along to the
fields inland of the coastguard cottages but the field was vast and the bird
was by itself and despite a good search we could not find it. Many Curlew probed and were coming up with
big fat worms and a flock of 150 or so Linnets were favouring the next field
along. Skylarks were all around us and
flocks of Rooks and Wood Pigeons were in the more vegetated fields and a circling Hercules and the puffing Britannia were quality
distractions.
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| In there somewhere |
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| Hercules |
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| Britannia |
Retracing our steps gave us two out of place juvenile Mute
Swans on the sea and a Sandwich Tern that almost snuck past us below the cliff. A pair of Stonechats were in the car park
where a Cetti’s Warbler sung and a pair of Buzzard in the pine trees included an
incredibly pale one.
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| Mute Swans |
The day plan went a bit wafty at this point with lunch at
Walsey Hills before doing the East Bank (to look for a Grey Phalarope amongst
other things) failed due to lack of parking opportunities so I opted after
failing to find anywhere else to park for going back along the coast to Stiffkey
Wood but as we got into the village we were being told to try and turn round as
a serious accident had occurred and there was no way through. Cue some
interesting about turning and then wiggling towards and through Warham before
popping back out on the Wells road.
Lunch was at last taken at North Point Pools where we had
the place to ourselves and could watch Plovers, Egrets and
various Geese from the comfort of the van.
Our subsequent walk down to the sea wall and back gave us better views
of at least 18 Cattle Egrets and skeins of conversational Brent Geese while Red
Kites and Marsh Harriers quartered the saltings but alas there were no other
Harrier species lurking.
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| Lapwings |
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| Egyptian Geese |
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| Cattle Egrets |
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| Cattle Egret |
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| Cattle Egret |
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| Cattle Egrets - they are just so entertaining |
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| Golden Plover |
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| Pink-foot |
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| Brent Geese in the sun |
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| Brent Geese |
There were still some Ivy flowers and each was rammed full
of very hungry Common Wasps. There were
no Bees or Flies whatsoever. The set
aside field had quite a few Skylark in it as well as a good variety of flowers
still in bloom with Creeping Thistle, Smooth Sow Thistle, Bristly Ox-Tongue, Scentless
Mayweed, Ox-eye Daisy, Weld, Common Cudweed, Field Speedwell, Scarlet Pimpernel,
Field Pansy, Creeping Buttercup, Perennial Rocket, White Dead Nettle and Dandelion
which is quite impressive for the very end of October.
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| Common Wasps |
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| Creeping Thistle |
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| Weld |
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| Field Pansy |
Back at the van the first Brown Hare was found and the Lapwings
in the field had been joined by the previously aerial Golden Plover flock and
now contained two Ruff as well.
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| Grumpy Egrets |
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| Golden Plover |
With the light going I moved us on and stopped again at the
layby overlooking Burnham Overy Dunes and, as hoped Yellowhammers began to drop
into the hedges to roost, the Green Woodpecker yaffled and Chinese Water Deer,
Muntjac and Brown Hares started to appear in the fields.
But there were surprises too with two flocks totalling well
over 100 Barnacle Geese out on the marshes, a leucistic Pink-foot with his
normal coloured brethren and a fantastic Starling murmuration topping several
thousand birds that quickly built up and cut some shapes in the sky with
swirling and twirling before dropping down into the cattle fields for a last
feed where they blackened the ground before eventually the signal for bedtime
was given and the whole lot dropped into the big reed bed for the night.
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| Starlings |
I had not given up on Barn Owl and was scanning while
counting the obscene number of Water Deer when one passed through my view. I have never spent so log trying to get
everyone onto a distant hunting Barn Owl in the last vestiges of light but I
tallied it up in in 12 days of guiding up here since mid-September this is the
first that I have seen along this whole coast.
Something is not right about that.
With the temperature dropping and the light almost non-existent
we made our way back to Briarfields where a pre-dinner stare at the amazing
starry skies gave me meteorites, satellites and, with Antony’s help on the
phone, the glowing ball and near vertical tail of Comet Lemmon while the calls
of late Pink-feet could be heard as they followed the coast.
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| Comet Lemmon - Antony Wren |
