The unprecedented Easterly winds that have occurred so far in October have dropped a few more scarce and rare birds than we would normally get.
Having arrived back home from Scillies on Thursday evening I thought on Saturday there might be a few more additions for the year list that would be around. Little did I expect to see a new British bird. My first for two years since the Grey Catbird in Cornwall.
When the message came out regarding the Eastern Roufous Bush-chat at Stiffkey it filled me with elation and then dread. This was a very rare bird. The responsible thing would be to keep away as parking difficulties and poor social distancing was almost inevitable.
Photos of crowds and stories of police giving out fines reached us. We decided to spend the morning at Holme watching a Pallas’s Warbler and Red flanked Bluetails and see how the situation lied later in the day when the initial surge of birders moved on. This was a good decision as we when we arrived we had no difficulty parking and social distancing was easy. Although I would have liked to have seen more birders wearing face masks we decided it was safe. A swift walk out across the ‘mud-rink’ of the saltmarsh (Tania decided to wear a mud facepack on two occasions) and 10 minutes later we were watching the bird.
We didn’t stop long. Just long enough to ‘scratch an itch’ that was 40 years in the making.
Letter From Norfolk 