After sharing some of our lunch with the previously mentioned 'tame' birds in the Titchwell car park we hit the North Coast road to head to Salthouse. Paul and I discovered the delights of Salthouse last year when we were both desperate to see snow buntings and a helpful local birder said casually that if we went there, the birds would be feeding in the car park. We didn't believe him and were subsequently amazed when we pulled up and a flock of 20+ snow buntings landed no more than 20ft from the car on a grass covered bank to feed!
After that experience, it was a definite stop on this trip. As we arrived we saw some large camera lenses pointed at the bank on which the buntings were feeding last year, but this time the birds didn't instantly arrive. We took a walk up the shingle bank and looked back to see a good sized flock of at least 40 snow buntings circling around the car park and eventually coming down to feed on the bank. From this position I took this photo.
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| Snow Buntings - Salthouse - Feb. 2012 - Mike Ixer |
Not the greatest photo I will ever take, but I quite liked the action of it. More interesting was this next photo.
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| Snow Buntings - Salthouse - Feb. 2012 - Mike Ixer |
It wasn't until after I looked at this on the computer that I realised there was a bird who was already significantly through it's moult and was very white. If I had realised at the time, I would have spent longer trying to get a really good shot of it. Final snow bunting picture I like because it's not often you actually get to see snow buntings on snow, so here you go.
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| Snow Buntings - Salthouse - Feb. 2012 - Mike Ixer |
We then headed over the shingle bank to have a look over the sea which was now incredibly calm and still. A scan over with the binoculars revealed plenty of wigeon, some gulls and an interesting grebe. I could instantly tell it was either a black-necked or slavonian grebe, but it wasn't until plenty of um'ing and ah'ing whilst looking through Paul's telescope that I was 75% sure it was a slavonian. This was quite exciting for me because I'd never seen a slav grebe before - but at the same time this made me vary wary about my identification. Thankfully at that point a more experienced sea watcher than myself arrived and was able to confirm it to be a slavonian - very happy Mike at this point! Shortly after we left, dodging the dunlins and turnstones that had also taken to feeding in the car park, to travel those couple of miles back up the road to Cley.
Unfortunately we arrived the Norfolk Wildlife Trust's famous Cley reserve a little later than planned and the setting sun was always against us. It was a bit of a whistle-stop tour of which the undoubted highlight was a group of ruff. Unfortunately we didn't have time to get around the edge of the reserve to the beach where Paul and I had seen this shorelark the previous year.
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| Shorelark - Cley NWT - Feb. 2011 - Mike Ixer |
That said, none had been reported there on Saturday, so we would have in all likelihood been disappointed. As the sun was disappearing a few skeins of geese flew over which included a few groups of pink-feet - but nothing on the scale of what we witnessed last year when at least a thousand flew low overhead and appeared to go to roost in a field near the Cley visitors centre.
And so ended our trip. Having left the flat a bit before 6am, we got back at 8pm and I was knackered. Well worth it for the 78 species of bird we saw which, as I have explained, included some real crackers.
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