A Bit Of A Twitch (Part Three)

Lincolnshire was now behind us. We had a week or so back home in South Wales before we were off on our next trip. This time it was to meet up and stay with our good friends Kate and Gavin, who live in Harwich, Essex. They knew I was into my bird watching so they had already done a bit of research into their local nature reserves. The main purpose of our visit was a whistle stop visit to Amsterdam, sailing from Harwich. What a wonderful city Amsterdam is. As we were there mainly for sightseeing I really did not do any bird watching at all … well okay I looked up quite a lot … and along the canals … and out of the train windows … And from the ferry, where I ticked off a rather nice Arctic Skua for the list … What I did discover was the port area of the Hook of Holland had a lot of Grey Herons! They were everywhere. A large flock of House Sparrows populated the hedgerow outside the train station at the ferry port. The usual gulls were circling the dock, Black-Headed Gulls and Herring Gulls prevalent. That was about the sum total of my bird watching for the two days we were there.

As promised our hosts entertained us royally. They knew of my love of all things raptor and owl shaped so we went off to the Suffolk Owl Sanctuary. Alas I could not tick any of the wonderful captive species they have there, but it is wonderful chance to get up close and personal to some of our wonderful falcons and owls, especially those species rarely seen in the wild, such as Merlin and Montagu’s Falcon. Any wildlife sanctuary will always attract wild birds as there is always food going spare from spillages. Sure enough there were Carrion Crows around picking up any missed morsels of meat the birds of prey dropped after the falconry displays were over. I also spied a couple of Pied Wagtails to add to the list. Suffolk Owl Sanctuary is well worth a visit if you are in that part of the world.

Our second birding trip was to the Essex Wildlife Trust’s reserve at Abberton Reservoir. It is primarily a wildfowl reserve, so visiting in the middle of summer was always going to be a quiet time for adding to the list. We did add a Cormorant that was sunning itself, wings in that trademark cruciform shape, on one of the Common Tern nesting ramps that are situated on the reservoir. There were a couple of Common Terns still about. The nature reserve was dripping with butterflies and dragonflies, making the most of the wonderful day’s warmth and sunshine. There were a number of Clouded Yellow butterflies flitting around. A new one for me, and I discovered later in the summer that 2013 was turning out to be “Clouded Yellow” year as significant numbers had arrived into the country; the South East coast of England their first landfall. Peacock Butterflies seemed to be in decent numbers, and a stunning Painted Lady Butterfly posed rather perfectly for me. Common and Ruddy Darters buzzed the path ahead of us. The summer of warm weather seems to have given our insect species a bit of a boom time after the past few years of gloomy, cold and wet weather. Hopefully we will see this as the various conservation groups tot up all the counts and reporting frequencies for the season in the coming weeks. Early indications appear to bare out it has been a good season.

Our time in Essex was over, we bid farewell to Gavin and Kate, and okay, the list hadn’t grown by many species, but it had not been the primary cause of the visit. We had to pop back to Lincolnshire for a couple of days on family business. I was so glad we did. This time the schedules were clear for two days of proper birding at Freiston and Frampton.

Over the course of the two days we got some magnificent views of a Marsh Harrier drifting languidly along the sea defences at Frampton. A couple of life ticks for me in the shape of the wonderfully dainty Little Stint, and the scare Wood Sandpiper. In much of the same way it has been a Clouded Yellow year; it appears to have been a Sandpiper eruption year, with this passage migrant showing up all over the country during August. Large numbers of Curlew Sandpipers also turned up, but more on that in the final part of this blog.

A couple of hours at Freiston Shore allowed us to watch the large colony of Oystercatchers there slowly depart in groups to feed on the receding high tide. Suddenly the remaining birds and everything else on the colony went up at once. Hundreds of birds filled the sky. Something must have spooked them. My wife was first to spot the culprit. The Marsh Harrier (probably the same one we saw at Frampton the day before) drifted over the lagoon. It was quite a memory to be left with as we headed home again.

We had one more trip east to make, this time to birding nirvana of North Norfolk. Cley Marshes, Strumpshaw Fen and Titchwell Marshes were on the agenda. The list was expanding healthily and Norfolk at migration time could not fail to be spectacular. It delivered in spades … that and the full total of all that we saw will be the subject of the final part of this blog.

© All Images Anthony Walton