Blue headed Wagtail

A movement of Yellow Wagtails at West Runton the other day had a couple of Blue headed within them … including this lovely male feeding between the cattle.

Revisit

It’s been a few years since I’ve been to Sculthorpe Moor near Fakenham and I’d forgotten how good it was for photography of common species.

I got asked to do an interview for a student film maker a couple of weeks ago and we decided to meet and film at The Hawk and Owl Trust’s Sculthorpe Moor. After the filming I went onto a rather wet reserve and had a scout around.

Winter Warmers

The milder coastal region attracts a few Kingfishers to the marshes each winter. This year there are several around Cley. This little female was enjoying her supper.

Spring in the air

Lot’s of head bobbing among ducks on the scrape; the procreation hormones were pumping in the bright sunshine. This Shoveler was showing his true beautiful colours.

Flocking

Some big flocks of Pink-footed Geese around the marshes last week. Among them a Ruddy Shelduck and a lone Barnacle Goose. Associating flocks of Brents also contained the over wintering Red Breasted Goose. A Goose fest if ever there was one.

Move to the North

In Norfolk, a cold Northerly wind is called ‘A lazy wind’; because it doesn’t go around you. As soon as that compass point shifted to the North last week it brought a lazy wind and a couple of Waxwings too.

Changes

You’ll see that the layout of ‘Letter from Norfolk’ has changed slightly. Friend Bob made me aware that he was unable to see posts on the site. When I investigated further ‘WordPress’, the hosts of the site, have mucked around with things at their end which made the site difficult if not impossible to see on a desktop or tablet although it was still ok on a mobile.

To see photographs just click on the title of the post. From there you can navigate through previous posts with the arrows on the top of the page. The site will probably morph a little over the coming weeks as I tweak it a little. So you will see a few changes.

In the meantime here’s a Red-backed Fairy Wren hunting spiders in Australia last November.

No jokes please

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)

Goshawk

It’s surprising what you can find on the edge of the woods if you’re quiet.

A grizzling post

I’ve been criticised before for writing posts like this rather than ‘pretty little blogs’. Well if you don’t like it I’d ask you to go and read something else.

I was watching the BBC’s Breakfast Show, en passant, the other morning and an interesting article on Emperor Penguins caught my attention. Naga Manchetty was interviewing a Dr somebody or other in Christchurch New Zealand (or at least I presumed it was New Zealand) who was relating that the Southern Ocean sea ice was getting less and less because of the warming climate. Emperor Penguins that use the ice upon which to nest were in a sorry old state and the size and numbers of colonies was decreasing. He estimated that we would loose King Penguins (as well as some other species) within 30 years because they can’t adjust to the rapidly changing conditions.

An iconic species lost. Gone. Never to return.

Naga’s response was “This is something to keep an eye on”. Really?

What that Dr somebody didn’t say was more powerful than what he did. He didn’t say this was the next canary in the mine to bow its head and threaten to fall from the perch. He didn’t say this is just a preamble to chaos and disaster on a scale the human race has not yet seen. He didn’t talk about the fires, the wars over fresh water in the tropics, the collapse of the food chain and the financial markets. He didn’t say it was a preamble to areas of the world becoming uninhabitable with resulting wholesale migration of people both North and South … but mainly North into Europe and North America. He didn’t say anything about the ensuing wars this migration would bring. But there again why should he. This Dr Somebody had probably dedicated half his life to studying Penguins and he’s just reporting the facts as he sees them. It’s not up to him. He’s no politician he’s ‘just’ a scientist.

Naga then moved onto the next article; about uncontrollable fires in Canada.

Somebody in charge of us is just not joining up the dots.

Is it too late? I honestly don’t know. I see lots of good happening in the world but I also see people ignorant and isolating themselves from the truth. The draconian changes needed worldwide to even start to put things right are such that the existing political system would mean someone with enough gumption to correct things would never get voted in. Think about it. The natural world is in balance. It has achieved that balance over millennia. A reliance of species upon species that has been millions of years in the making. We breed like rabbits and upset that balance with our need to eat and deploy our waste. The simple matter is there are just too many of us. We have upset the balance because of our numbers. Can you imagine the UK prime minister standing behind that lectern in Downing Street and stating you can only have a single child for the foreseeable future? How long would he last?

I’ve just returned from doing a sea watch at Weybourne. I spent 2 hours looking out to sea and I saw bugger all. No more than a few distant Gannets, a Cormorant or two and a few miserable Guillemots spinning in the surf obviously suffering with Avian Influenza.

I have two centres of light in my life. One bright shining beacon is sat on the sofa right next to me here. If it wasn’t for her drenching me with love I think I’d go uncontrollably mad. The other is a chink of light. A trust in nature. A trust developed since childhood and an understanding that when we are all gone, when we have facilitated our own end, Mother Nature will rise again. The earth will still be here. That’s my hope. I’ve never seen an Emperor Penguin. I probably never will. I’ve seen King Penguins … not off Weybourne of course.