Oli's Birding Blog: 15th August 2015 (Norfolk)

We drove up to Norfolk yesterday to visit relatives, however we saw no Red Kites while driving through London. We had a Nuthatch in the Garden of our relatives house in the afternoon.

Birds that visited the garden during our visit.

Today, we had a fantastic trip along the North Norfolk Coast seeing 87 species. This morning a Sparrowhawk caught a Blackbird, and sat with it on the back lawn.

First stop was Burnham Overy, where I Quickly located my first Egyptian Geese of the Trip. As we walked down towards Burnham Dunes, we had very close views of a flying Barn Owl. We arrived at the Dunes at 0800hrs. A birder already present said that he had been watching the Apple Tree for the Icky for 1.5 Hours and hadn't seen it, so it wasn't looking good. I decided to move over to higher ground to get a better view of the whole area, and I instantly picked up the Icterine Warbler! I called over to the other birders, but it disapeared back into the bushes before any of them arrived. For a while, no one saw anything, and I was starting to think no one would believe me, but to my relief one of the others saw it breifly, and then it came out and showed very well for everyone. A brief seawatch off Burnham Dunes produced an Arctic Skua.

(Unfortunately, I didn't have access to my usual camera today, so most of the photos on this post are taken with my phone through the scope)

Egyptian Geese

Barn Owl

Icterine Warbler

Next stop was Titchwell. We had a fair selection of waders, though nothing better than lots of Ruff and a summer-plumaged Grey Plover. There was 3 Spoonbills and at least 1 Yellow Wagtail on the freshmarsh, and a female Red-Crested Potchard between the island hide and the visitor centre. Seawatching produced a Marsh Harrier being mobbed by another Arctic Skua, and interestingly, a male Common Scoter was found sitting on the Beach!

Black-Tailed Godwits

Common Scoter sat on the Beach!

We drove to Cley Marshes and parked up at the visitor centre, where we had 2 Lesser Whitethroats in the car park. We walked to the North Scrape hide, where we had 2 Little Stints, a Wood Sandpiper, 4 Green Sandpipers, 2 Little Ringed Plovers, a Hobby and a Wheatear.

We then walked out to Blakney Point, where we had relatively little except a few Little Terns.

Blakney Seal Colony

We returned to Cley in the evening and watched Simmond's and Pat's Pools. We had a Curlew Sandpiper, another 2 Wood sandpipers and a Green Sandpiper at close range, a sleeping male Garganey, a Water Rail, 2 very showy Little Gulls and 2 adult Yellow-Legged Gulls. Just before 2100hrs, a sub-adult gull flew in that may have been the caspian gull that has been present here recently, however the light was very poor at this point and I lost bird after my scope was moved.