Another Brick in the Wall

Holkham looked a good bet for today’s birding tour. It wasn’t the juvenile Red Backed Shrike that lit up our walk; or even the two or three Yellow browed Warblers that were shouting at us from the end of the pines. Not even the four Cattle Egrets in with the Belted Galloways took centre stage. It was the Wall Butterflies.

I have honestly never seen Wall Butterflies in such profusion. We must have seen about 40 or so during the afternoon. Not in one’s and two’s but frequently in groups of three or four.

I think I managed to see more Walls in one afternoon than I have seen collectively over a couple of years. Perhaps these are a third brood taking advantage of the beautiful sunshine and the shelter from that persistent Northerly wind offered by the pines.

Surprise!

On Saturday and Sunday my guests were treated to a ‘Migration Weekend’ in Norfolk like no other. We couldn’t have hit the weather better. This was, as the county bird recorder said to me on Monday, ‘Norfolk at its best’

Easterlies streamed in from far parts of the continent and carried with them migrant birds in their droves. Driven down to our shore and hinterlands by the incessant rain the migrants pored in. Common birds stole the limelight. A fall of Blackcaps were obvious with seven on one branch at one point. Song Thrushes, Redwings, Siskins and Meadow pipits came in low off the sea. At one point even a Robin joined us briefly in the ‘Beach Hotel’ at Cley as it flew from the surf, over the shingle and away to safety.

Wildfowl too were on the move with big skeins of Brent and Pinkfeet coupled with large flocks of Wigeon.

Among the prizes were a brief Barred Warbler. A couple of Yellow Browed Warblers, one of which was very ‘shouty’ and showed well; the other silent and demure. It was almost like watching two different species. And what about that Common Swift we saw at Wells? As Tania said “That one had hit the snooze button too many times”.

… and then there was the bird that flew out over us in Wells woods. The last time I saw a Cuckoo in October it was a vagrant from America sporting a Yellow Bill.

Next years October Migration weekend is already up for booking on the website.

Six Stripe Sprite

There’s something quite special about living on the east coast, a stone’s throw from the sea. Migrating birds apart, living in West Runton is very nice indeed; but especially so when the autumn wind is in the east and I can walk out of my front door and within 400m be watching three Yellow Browed Warblers, a handful of Redstarts and a Little Bunting. So it was last week. Well, I say ‘watching’ a Little Bunting. When asked ‘were we watching the Little Bunting?’ friend Bob replied … “It’s that little we can’t bloody see it” It was probably the most elusive individual of the species I’ve seen. It sat tighter than an Extinction Rebellion activist, hardly shifting from it’s field of Sugar Beet. When it did move it exploded from one patch of mugwort to another low and fast; as if it were on a zip wire. It did show for me eventually … but not well.

It was however the Yellow Broweds that made my day. I absolutely love seeing these little Siberian migrants. I’m not sure if it’s their bright plumage or the way they jauntily flit about picking-off every small insect they find. Maybe, it’s the fact they have travelled all the way from Northern Russia and crossed the North Sea that I find so incredible. Anyways, I really do think they are enigmatic and worth seeking out in the few weeks each year they pass along our coast. Terrific birds.

 

 

Shouty Siberian

Wherever you go amid the Isles of Scilly in October it’s likely you will hear the ‘tsoeest’ of Yellow-browed Warblers. We found this one skulking in bushes at Trenoweth … but we had others.

Northerly Winds

I organised a migration day out on Saturday. As it filled up straight away I thought I’d organise another for the following day. Saturday and Sunday became a migration weekend. With strong Northerly winds we were expecting something special and we weren’t disappointed. The Saturday seawatch gave us wildfowl galore as Teal, Eider, Brent, Pinkfeet and Shelduck streamed passed us punctuated with regular Gannets. Manx and Sooty Shearwaters put in an appearance as did the odd Arctic Skua and Red throated Diver. We even managed a Scaup giving excellent views with a side act of bobbing Jack Snipe. However it was the calm after the storm on the Sunday when passerines started to crop up. Goldcrests, Chiffchaffs, Yellow browed Warblers and a Barred Warbler. A beautiful male Hen Harrier delighted us with a flypast but not after it had been harried by a persistent Merlin, all against a background of leaving birds such as Spoonbill.

Next year I think a migration weekend is on the cards!

Over the brow

Yellow browed Warblers, the seven striped sprites, have to be my favourite; tiny loved jewels from the north. Occupants of the Taiga forests these birds move in a fleeting migration through the UK and winter in north Africa and southern Europe in small numbers.

On a birding tour at the end of last month we found not one but two together at Stiffkey. Try as I might to get the right angle to photograph both together I couldn’t do it. Still … just adore these tiny, tiny long distant migrants. In the last few years one was even found in Australia. How’s that for a migration?

Backlit

I was just tidying up one or two photographs the other day and came across this one I took on Scillies.

We were walking back to the quay on St Agnes having been entertained by a Red Flanked Bluetail in bulb fields nearby. The pittosporum hedgerow we walked beside was spilling over the path above head height and forming an enclave free from the wind. Where the hedgerow gave way to a few deciduous trees the sun sprayed shafts of light through the leaves to the ground where they danced around us. It was the sort of scene more typical of a late autumn woodland than of a footpath between fields. As I looked up something caught my eye. Against the backlit translucent pale green was the distinctive shape of a warbler. It was hanging and hovering as it picked insects delicately from the dappled foliage. A closer look revealed it was yet another Yellow browed Warbler.

Hide and seek

Everything was so shy the other week. A silent Yellow browed Warbler at Walsey Hills flitted discretely in the ivy and nearby at Kelling a Barred Warbler with a severe case of agoraphobia moved imperceptibly from branch to branch in the middle of a hawthorn.

 

 

Surprise

Given the invasive numbers of Yellow browed Warblers that were turning up further north and given I’d already found three here on the hill last week not but 800m from Falcon Cottage; I wasn’t in the least bit surprised when one started calling from the garden on Saturday. It or probably another brighter individual is still here today.

I wasn’t even surprised when yesterday a Lapland Bunting flew over the house; and I certainly expected the sixty or so Blackbirds, Redpolls, Siskins and Swallows that were using the garden as a staging post on their way south. What I wasn’t expecting however was what I flushed from a bush across the field.

When dawn broke I went for my usual walk locally. The mist was transient and at times quite thick as it overpowered the sun which was desperately trying to burn it off. I checked the far corner of the field and had given up on finding anything of true note when I noticed around 50 Blue Tits on the wires above the large hawthorn. They weren’t happy. I expected to raise my bins and see one of the two local Kestrels tolerating some incessant mobbing. Instead a Grey Shrike bolted from its perch over my head and landed way distant. Detail lost in the mist. From what I saw I’m pretty sure it was a Great Grey Shrike and not something rarer. Surprising yes! Given I’d not heard of any others this autumn throughout the whole of the country; although one at Horsey around the coast made landfall later the same day.

 

Everywhere but nowhere

I must type up that report.

My morning walk around the hill found just a single Yellow browed Warbler. Throughout Norfolk rare birds were being found all over … the best of which was a Red flanked Bluetail. I cracked. The report would have to wait.

On arrival at the Bluetail I saw it for 20 seconds and it promptly disappeared for an hour. Behaving very un-Bluetail like, taking jaunts in among the canopy rather than seeking low level perches, it proved extremely elusive. Even the nearby Long eared Owl played peek-a-boo from the hedgerow and a Great Grey Shrike with its mobbing entourage was always distant never near.

The following day I tried again but the Bluetail had moved on, as expectedly had the Long eared Owl. At nearby Wells the previous days Radde’s Warbler showed once and then took to ground. The only sighting of the accompanying Olive backed Pipit I got was as it vaporised over my shoulder at the speed of light.

It was only as I viewed my fourth Yellow browed Warbler of the day did a bird show on the right side of all the intervening vegetation.

Time to type up that report.