I had a very productive long Easter weekend in Norfolk with a birding chum where we managed to visit the North and East coast with some inland birding thrown in as well!!
10th April 2009 RSPB Buckenham Marshes & RSPB Strumpshaw Fen
Buckenham Marshes
The day started out superbly with wall to wall sunshine and luckily it stayed like this for the whole day! The birds also came out for the sunshine and after a few visits to Buckenham Marshes last year this visit was to be my most fruitful visit yet!! We started off by scanning the scrapes and managed to see Avocet, Shelduck, Teal, Wigeon, Little Egret, Greylag Geese, Lapwing, Grey Heron and Black Headed Gull together with a Marsh Harrier that was seen over the woods at Strumpshaw Fen, it was really strange to see the Marshes void of the hundreds of Teal and Wigeon that I witnessed there in my last visit in March! Before starting off on our walk to the Old Mill we had a nice chat with fellow BF member Gordon Hamlett who told us about the Cetti's and numerous Willow Warblers that he had seen at Strumpshaw first thing in the morning, strangely Buckenham was quiet for both of these birds but as we started our walk we heard a distant Sedge Warbler (my first for the year!) and a we turned the corner we were awarded with super views of it singing from one of the reed stems! The light was perfect and I managed to get some super pics of the Sedge Warbler, it must have been enjoying the sun as it didn't flinch as we approached it!! At the scrapes near the old mill we saw Redshank, Shoveller, Moorhen, Mallards, Shelduck and Grey Heron. On the walk back to the car park the path was buzzing with Peacock butterflies, they seemed to be everywhere and looked really stunning with the sun on them!!
Strumpshaw Fen
We had hoped to see the Barn Owl hunting over the Meadow trail but unfortunately this didn't happen, apparently the female doesn't like the male to be in the box with her when she is sitting on eggs and so he usually perches on a branch near to the box, our lack of Barn Owl sighting must mean that the female wasn't on eggs yet. On our walk to the Fen Hide we heard at least 3 Willow Warblers in the nearby trees together with a distant Chiffchaff and a very well hidden Cetti's! The Fen hide was very quiet for birds with the main activity being from 4 territorial Greylag Geese, a couple of Tufted Ducks, a Little Grebe and a pair of Coots! We decided to try our luck with the Tower hide and luckily we managed to see a Little Gull over one of the broads before we got to the hide together with Pochard, Shelduck and a pair of displaying great Crested Grebes out on the main broad. The highlight from the Tower hide was watching 4 Marsh Harriers hunting over the reeds and the bright sunshine really showed their summer colours up brilliantly!!
11th April 2009 RSPB Minsmere
This was to be the top spot from my Easter weekend of birding firstly for all the birds we saw and secondly for all the bad weather that we managed to escape in inland Norfolk!! We walked around the whole reserve and our notable highlights included seeing the Black Tailed Godwit (40+) in their summer plumage and a Ruff which was in its summer plumage but had a few feathers that didn't want to stay down! On the scrapes we also saw Dunlin, Ringed Plover, Avocet, Black headed Gull, Turnstone, Lapwing, Gadwall, Shoveller, Teal, Little Egret and Greylag Geese. It was a good job that we had done the reserve walk in the morning as the visitor numbers gradually increased during the morning to the extent where it was hard to even get a seat in some of the hides! We were told that a Nightingale had been heard near the sluice but we didn't manage to see/hear it, instead we had another super view of a Sedge Warbler out in the open so this more than made up for the lack of a Nightingale!
In the afternoon we headed over to the Island Mere hide first of all stopping at the Bittern Hide which was chock a block full of people so we decided to carry on with our walk, in 4 visits to Minsmere last year I dipped on the Bittern each time from this hide so I think this is turning into my 'bogey hide'!! The Island Mere Hide was a lot quieter and we managed to get some good seats with a corner window as well, this allowed us to scan the top of the reeds for warblers and it also allowed us some super views of Marsh Harriers as they came pretty close to the hide! The highlight of my day was to happen in this hide when out of the corner of my eye I saw a 'rusty' coloured small bird dart into the reeds, my first thought as a Bearded Tit but I wasn't 100% sure as I had only seen them once before from a distance. After about 15 mins of constant looking into the reeds we were treated to some super views of a Male Bearded Tit hanging on to a reed out in the open, this was to be my best view of a Bearded Tit and luckily it stayed there ling enough for me to have a good look at it through my bins before taking a few photographs! As the day drew to a close the booming from the Bitterns was getting more frequent...alas I still dipped on seeing my Minsmere Bittern!!!
12th April RSPB Surlingham Church Marsh & Ted Ellis Reserve
We decided to visit a couple of new reserves that we hadn't been to before to get a general view of where they are and what potential they have got! Unfortunately both reserves were quiet for birds apart from Cetti's, Chiffchaff, Willow Warbler and Sedge Warblers which could be heard singing around both reserves perhaps we had just visited them on the wrong day!!! The Ted Ellis Reserve has got some really good potential for seeing Butterflies and Dragonflies during the summer so this reserve will definitely be on my next Norfolk trip agenda!!