One bird that caused us the run-around on Scillies was this Glossy Ibis. When eventually I did catch up with the bird it was all over me like a cheap suit! I watched it for some time feeding in a flooded tractor rut in the corner of a bulb field just the other side of a low wall. It caught a large worm of some sort but made short work of it.
The tour to Scillies last week was a wonderful adventure with some entertaining guests. By far the most memorable part of the week on the enchanted Isles concerned the seabirds. Some years there is very little to see from the Scillonian but we were blessed with many large shearwaters on the outward journey.
One of my guests, John, stated that he had a gaping hole on his bird list; the Great Shearwater. Little did we know the years and years of him waiting to see one would be rewarded with not just one but at least a thousand of these birds appearing alongside. We had some wonderful close encounters with not only Great’s but also Cory’s Shearwaters, Gannets and a few Sooty Shearwaters too.
It can’t be long before we get a good thriving breeding population of Cattle Egrets here in Norfolk. This one was in the Eye field at Cley a week or so ago.
WILSON! A cry from a raft at sea. Castaway. A Tom hanks blockbuster. A very much quieter exclamation as I scanned a Norfolk marsh; said under my breath.
Alexander Wilson was an American ornithologist who had quite a few species named after him including a Snipe, a Plover, a Storm Petrel, a Warbler … and a Phalarope.
A Wilson’s Phalarope has spent the last week or so moving to various sites along the North Norfolk coast. Estranged from it’s North American home this needle fine billed, gravy boat shaped bird was happily eking a living picking insects from the waters surface.
When I walked into the hide last week the nearest gull immediately revealed itself as a Little Gull; the small size, the dark capped crown, dainty small bill and that beautiful dark underwing. All befitting features of the world’s smallest gull.
At Minsmere the other day we happened across a photographer who had cut up little chunks of apple. He’s laid them and placed them on wooden staging just above the water level of the pond in what used to be the old car park.
Water Voles just can’t resist apple.
Tania and I found ourselves in Teeside last week. A place I’ve been a number of times before. The first time was in November 1996 to see a Great Knot. That was the second British record. It was so far away across the mud flats it got labelled the ‘Great Dot’. That was 7 years after the first record in Shetland. It took me a further 18 years to get a decent view of one, here in Norfolk.
Another memorable time in the Teeside area was to see a White throated Robin in June 2011. It was actually a little further North in Cleveland on the other side of the Tees mouth. A legendary bird of the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean. This again was the second British record; found hopping around a doctors garden. I was invited into the garden to see it.
There were several other times I visited the Teeside area over the years for Franklin’s Gulls, Ross’s Gulls, Short billed Dowitcher and more, but what drove us there this time was Tania wanted a part of the Booby influx. An unprecedented number had entered UK waters in late summer. A Red footed Booby had spend some time on Scilly and was later joined by a Brown Booby. It or another bird or two settled on the East coast; one of them had taken up residence in the mouth of the river Tees.
My twitching days have taken a back seat of late and that’s because these days I want to be a little more responsible regarding the carbon I put into the atmosphere*. However, there are certain birds that turn up and their presence just nags away at me to a point where I have to make an effort to suppress common sense. The Brown Booby I guess is one of those. Having said that, the species will no doubt move it’s realm nearer to us as that temperature contour moves forever Northward. Sort of ironic really that by driving so far to see a bird I’m accelerating global warming and the incidence of those birds occurring. I guess several more species of Booby may make the UK list before too long.
I was pleased to see the bird as it ‘Buoy hopped’ around the river mouth. It never came close however, much to my chagrin. We both commented on it’s distinctive flight, which made the bird uniquely obvious even at distance; sort of half skua, half shearwater.
I managed a few distant record shots but not the feather detailing, crippling full framers I would have liked. Roll on when they roost regularly on Cromer Pier.
(*I do try to offset my carbon release – I’m not a complete villain)
Letter From Norfolk 