This is a blog about days out for a party of just three. Honeyguider Ceri from Queensland, Australia was with our group in the Spanish Pyrenees during the first week of October, after which she was keen to see some of East Anglia while she was in the UK. In other circumstances I might have invited local Honeyguiders to join us. However, a dose of Covid meant that wasn’t wise: we restricted this to three of us, namely me, Ceri and Ann, who had all tested positive. Chris Durdin
Sunday afternoon, 13 October: I picked up Ceri from Norwich bus station then, after a late lunch, we met Ann and walked around the main broad (gravel pit) at Whitlingham Country Park. A close little egret was a good start, and other water birds like great crested grebes, Egyptian geese, numerous cormorants and tufted ducks were also easy to see, being well used to people here. Ceri appreciated a chance to compare gulls: lesser black-backed, herring, black-headed and common.
Monday morning, 14 October, started wet, though happily that soon cleared. It’s good to watch birds though the eyes of a visitor from down under. So the well-stocked birdfeeders at RSPB Strumpshaw Fen were a boon, with a procession of blue, great and coat tits. From Fen Hide there were good views of marsh harriers and the ‘ping’ of bearded tits. We walked the Woodland Trial (the Fen Trail was under water anyway) where we saw our first Chinese water deer of the day.
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| From Fen Hide, Strumpshaw Fen. |
We
moved onto nearby Buckenham Marshes, where there was immediately another
Chinese water deer. Looking towards Strumpshaw Fen we could see two red kites.
The big numbers of winter birds were still to arrive here, but there were
rooks, jackdaws and starlings in groups. The scrape area had wigeons, shovelers,
teals and lapwings.
Lunch was back at Thorpe St Andrew, after which we headed to NWT Hickling Marshes. We started again by watching bird feeders, this time with a greenfinch, chaffinch and goldfinches. Our route was alongside Brendan’s Marsh to Stubb Mill, now in sunshine. On the marsh a great white egret stood tall above the many wigeons, teals and lapwings. Volunteer Mike Dawson stopped for a chat and to pass on useful information. We followed a spotted redshank as it fed. On the field on the other side, two of the several flying stock doves settled long enough to be seen properly.
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| Common darters warming themselves on wood. |
The sun brought out dragonflies, and on one gate we counted 30 common darters warming themselves: they also liked landing on us. There was also a willow emerald damselfly, a very confiding male migrant hawker and a lovely red admiral.
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| Koniks at Hickling, their ancestors brought from Poland a few decades ago. Stubb Mill is in the background. |
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| Cranes at Stubb Mill, November 2021. |
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| Hickling collage. Top left, male migrant hawker. Right: common darter on a hat. Bottom:left: a great white egret on Brendan's Marsh. Bottom right: more darters. |
Tuesday,
15 October:
south-east to Suffolk, starting at RSPB Minsmere nature reserve. Outside the
visitor centre were impressively big parasol fungi. We walked along north wall
to east hide, from where there were hundreds of ducks: wigeons, teals,
shovelers, gadwalls, mallards, a few shelducks and two pintails. Waders were
very thin in numbers, just a single dunlin, a couple of both black-tailed
godwits and avocets.
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| At Minsmere: parasol fungus by the visitor centre, and wigeon among buttonweed on the Scrape. |
On
the beach, Ceri’s first sighting of the North Sea, we quickly saw groups of
dark-bellied geese flying south. One group had a single pink-footed goose at
its head, others had some cormorants joining the procession. Two birders were
standing by one of the WW2 concrete blocks, one of which was my old friend John
Grant, now president of the Suffolk Bird Group, clicker (for counting birds) in
hand. They’d been counting since first thing and had already logged 700 brent
geese. Later I heard that they finished for the day at 14:30 with 1,428 brent
geese counted to be entered onto BirdTrack.
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| Sea watching with John Grant (centre, behind my telescope) on Minsmere's beach (Ceri Pearce). |
At the sluice we turned to complete the loop around The Scrape. Three bearded tits dashed past, and the avocets were close to South Hide. There was a late-flowering marsh mallow. Back at the visitor centre, it was time for lunch and shopping.
For the afternoon, we drove the short distance to the National Trust’s Dunwich Heath. The ‘best-bird-near-the-car-park’ rule kicked in when a Dartford warbler sat on a scrubby bush. After that there were few birds to see, not even a stonechat, perhaps not helped by the grey weather. Ann noticed a common darter caught in a spider’s web, and we saw the garden spider circle then grasp the dragonfly. Western gorse and a few springs of bell heather were in flower. We found more parasol fungi, a fly agaric, birch milkcap and tiers of birch polypores. It was time to head back to Norwich.
The above mentions mostly bigger wildlife, so would be only fair to add that Ann, being Ann, was finding a steady trickle of mini-beasts from bees to galls to willow emerald egg-laying scars, and dozens of caddis-flies.
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| Dunwich Heath: birch milkcap (Ceri Pearce), death of a darter. |
Wednesday 16 October: knowing Ceri was heading for York, nice though York is, local pride meant it seemed only right to give her a gentle tour of Norwich’s equally good highlights this warm October morning. Our route was Norwich Castle, Royal Arcade, the market and Guildhall, The Lanes, Elm Hill, Cathedral and Pull’s Ferry, then back via London Street to take in various old banks and Jarrolds, all done with plenty of time to catch a lunchtime train. A peregrine twice flew over us near the cathedral, where you could see its nesting box.
