An early start and on the road at 7.00am for the drive west to Thornham harbour. By the time we had arrived there were already a few birders gathered looking for the long-staying Northern Harrier which I had been lucky enough to see back in November of last year. We spent well over an hour scanning the marshes to the east but in very high winds it was perhaps not that surprising that the bird failed to show. However, whilst there we did see several species of wader, including a small flock of Knot.
After a while we decided to head off with the intention of returning to Thornham later in the day and we followed the A149 south to the Wolferton "Triangle". As we drove around Dave spotted a male Golden Pheasant lurking in the undergrowth, so I slammed on the brakes and managed to see the bird as it ran off in to the vegetation, unfortunately Steve and John missed it. So after driving around for another ten minutes we parked up and got out to take a look. Despite spending forty minutes or so searching for these elusive birds we drew a blank, we even tried tape-luring them! So we retraced our steps and headed back north.
A brief stop at Hunstanton yielded a couple of Fulmars, but we did not linger due to the wind, and by 11.15am we were back at Thornham to see if the harrier was present. Unfortunately it was not, but we did see a couple of Spotted Redshanks feeding in a muddy gully, a Bittern in flight for several minutes, and a Barn Owl. A single Twite also flew over calling, heading west. So at midday we left Thornham knowing that we still had a couple of days to connect with this mega rare North American raptor.
No comments:
Post a Comment