Wednesday 9 February 2011

Cley Next the Sea and Burnham Norton - Sun 6 Feb

Again we were on the road by 7.00am and drive east to Cley Next the Sea, arriving soon after dawn and parking at the East Bank car park. We walked north along the East Bank scanning the small flocks of Eurasian Wigeon looking for a drake American Wigeon, and before long Dave had located it and got us all on the bird. Unfortunately, the light was still pretty poor so it did not present me with an ideal photo opportunity:

We then continued along the path to the sea, hearing several Bearded Tits calling in the reeds, but in the wind they were keeping out of sight.
When we reached the beach we got lucky and stumbled upon the wintering flock of Shore Larks, with ten birds present:
We watched these cracking birds for a good fifteen minutes as the steadily worked closer to us. We then spent a while scanning out to sea, and during that time at least a dozen Red-throated Divers flew through and a Guillemot was on the sea. We then started the walk back to the car, with Steve and I leading the way...which proved costly as we missed a Glaucous Gull that was flushed from the centre of the reserve by a passing Peregrine. Andy called us back, but it was too late, but we did see a Spoonbill. So we decided to head round to the beach car park and try and relocate the gull.
Ten minutes later we pulled in to the beach car park and walked along the beach to the hide that overlooks the reserve. When we arrived we were told that the gull had flown off west, so whilst John, Dave and Steve waited in the hide I decided to go and try and relocate the bird and went out to the beach and started scanning west, Andy decided to join me. Before long I had got on a large gull several hundred metres down the coast. I studied it for quite some time before it turned round and showed itself as the Glaucous Gull I missed half an hour earlier. A quick call to Steve in the hide alerted other birders and before long half a dozen of us had connected with the bird before it flew out to sea.
After a good start to the day we decided against entering the centre of the reserve and instead drove off towards Holt, pulling off the road at a site known as The Hangs. As we scanned through the flock of Pink-footed Geese we eventually got on to a Tundra Bean Goose, great stuff and another good bird for the weekend.
We then headed back west along the coast and stopped just outside the village of Burham Norton where a large flock of Pink-footed Geese was feeding in a sugar beet field. We scanned through the flock looking for an adult Ross's Goose, but could not locate it. Steve did however find a Barnacle Goose in the flock. A passing birder then told us that the Ross's Goose could be seen from a minor road at the top of the hill, so we zoomed up to the place in question getting out of the car just as the entire flock took to the air! Talk about bad luck, however, before long John managed to pick up the Ross's Goose in flight and then we were able to relocate the goose on distant fields as it showed up well on the dull fields, even if it was a couple of miles away! It was now getting on for lunch time so we set off to Titchwell after a great morning.

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