Birdquest update 18/35
Thursday's birding involved the annual trip to Weeting on the Norfolk/Suffolk border. I set off at 5.30 to avoid traffic on the A17, but above all to get to Weeting before the usual heat haze set in. I got there at 8.30, well before the heat haze, but the stone curlews weren't playing; they had gone over the rise in the ground, as usual. It wasn't till 12.30 that someone picked up a distand head and neck through the heat haze. Typical.
A quick check of Mayday Farm in the hope of seeing/hearing woodlarks, which didn't work; I suspect it's too early for them to be singing. So I headed on to Titchwell on the North Norfolk coast, because long-tailed ducks had been reported offshore. Nothing was offshore when I was there except a velvet scoter, whoch would have made my day any other year, but this year I'd got one back in January. However, there was a spotted redshank easily seen on the brackish marsh, and, the real bonus of the trip, as I was returning to the visitors' centre, a sudden burst of Cetti's warbler song from a bush in the reedbed made me look round, just in time to see the source of the noise stop singing and dive back into cover. Win! Those things are incredibly skulking, except when actually singing in the first 2 weeks of April. And even then they only put their heads up long enough to sing.
Saturday's birding saw another long trip for a 'go and get' bird, this time to Dunwich on the Suffolk coast (235 miles away). Another early start got me there at 9.45, luckily during a brief gap in the rain. Unfortunately, I'd miscalculated the time; unlike other warblers, the dartfords were not on territory singing, but still in winter stealth mode. Time to try other tactics, namely to test a piece of birding lore I'd often heard about: find the stonechat and you've found the dartford. With this in mind, I headed out along the usual path, keeping my eyes peeled. After 10 minutes I spotted a stonechat, perched prominantly on the top of the heather. It flitted right, conspicuously. I focussed my bins on the heather beneath its path. A small, dark shape flitted after it, inconspicuously, below the tops of the heather, Long tail, unformly dark upperparts. Pale belly. Burgundy underparts. OK. Tick. Out of curiosity I then found another stonechat, and what do you know, there was a dartford following that one too. By all the Gods, this stonechat thing WORKS! *astonished*
By the time I moved on to Minsmere the weather had gone downhill and as it was so early in the season there was nothing much to see except the permanent feral (but self-sustaining and tickable) barnacle geese, and a newly arrived blackcap singing on the path to North Hide. Oh well.
A quick check of Mayday Farm in the hope of seeing/hearing woodlarks, which didn't work; I suspect it's too early for them to be singing. So I headed on to Titchwell on the North Norfolk coast, because long-tailed ducks had been reported offshore. Nothing was offshore when I was there except a velvet scoter, whoch would have made my day any other year, but this year I'd got one back in January. However, there was a spotted redshank easily seen on the brackish marsh, and, the real bonus of the trip, as I was returning to the visitors' centre, a sudden burst of Cetti's warbler song from a bush in the reedbed made me look round, just in time to see the source of the noise stop singing and dive back into cover. Win! Those things are incredibly skulking, except when actually singing in the first 2 weeks of April. And even then they only put their heads up long enough to sing.
Saturday's birding saw another long trip for a 'go and get' bird, this time to Dunwich on the Suffolk coast (235 miles away). Another early start got me there at 9.45, luckily during a brief gap in the rain. Unfortunately, I'd miscalculated the time; unlike other warblers, the dartfords were not on territory singing, but still in winter stealth mode. Time to try other tactics, namely to test a piece of birding lore I'd often heard about: find the stonechat and you've found the dartford. With this in mind, I headed out along the usual path, keeping my eyes peeled. After 10 minutes I spotted a stonechat, perched prominantly on the top of the heather. It flitted right, conspicuously. I focussed my bins on the heather beneath its path. A small, dark shape flitted after it, inconspicuously, below the tops of the heather, Long tail, unformly dark upperparts. Pale belly. Burgundy underparts. OK. Tick. Out of curiosity I then found another stonechat, and what do you know, there was a dartford following that one too. By all the Gods, this stonechat thing WORKS! *astonished*
By the time I moved on to Minsmere the weather had gone downhill and as it was so early in the season there was nothing much to see except the permanent feral (but self-sustaining and tickable) barnacle geese, and a newly arrived blackcap singing on the path to North Hide. Oh well.