Tuesday 26 November 2013

En route Norfolk tick

On Sunday Lizzie Toby and I went for Sunday lunch at a friends in Sheringham so I thought it would be a missed opportunity if we didnt at least pop into the car park at Holt Country Park...
As we pulled in there was quite a crowd looking for the Parrot Crossbills, they had not been seen for a few hours at that point so i guess the crowd had just built up through the morning. Anyway after 3 mins 3 birds flew into one of the pines giving fairly good views although partially obscured for some of the time, even then it was obvious that they were monster crossbills! (jammy timing!)
One of the less red males decided to do the decent thing and flew to a branch nice and open and fairly close, probably to check out what all the people were doing there. This gave a great opportunity to really look at the bird, it looked amazing through the scope, I also got a few shots for the record.

What was quite interesting was the variety in bill size between the flock, some had really massive bills compared to others, the bird I photographed typically was a small billed bird but even so quite a clear parrot, check out the bull neck and forehead. After a short walk we returned to the car where the flock of 12 were flying back and forth giving the call I so wanted to hear just a little one syllable blip blip rather than a commons gLip gLip 2syllable call...one to remember for the future.




So off we went to Cleyspy to try out some more binoculars and then on to a fantastic roast beef. Great day out!

Monday 4 November 2013

Yarmouth cemy/beach

Another visit to Yarmouth Cemetery this morning produced 3+ Firecrests and 4 Chiffchaffs mostly within a large tit flock. Apart from that there was little to report, it did feel lie something could drop in, but as far as I saw...it didnt!
At the end of my final circuit I remembered that some Shorelarks had been seen on the beach not too far from the cemy so i decided to go and have a look. I'm glad I did, I was rewarded with some great views of these 4 birds in pretty good light too. This is not a species I see too often so was nice to have half an hour studying them and their calls. Unfortunately as is often the case with Shore Lark they were  moving about all over the place feeding well and squabbling amongst themselves, this made photography quite tricky. Cracking birds all the same and glad I went to have a look.