15th March

Norfolk

Yesterday I met up with my brother (he lives near Leicester) and a couple of friends (one living in Kings Langley, the other in Northamptonshire)  to spend the day birding parts of the North Norfolk Coast. I picked up Dave W in Hatfield and had arranged to meet Mark at NWT’s Cley Nature reserve between 8.00am and 8.15am. We pulled into the car park at 8.05am just as Mark was about to head off on to the reserve. My brother was aiming to meet us here at around 9.15am. The weather was 3 degrees centigrade with a brisk easterly wind  and overcast skies. Looking east the skies were much brighter and by 9.00am the sun was out, which fortunately for it remained so until 3.15pm. At this time we had just sat down in The RSPB’s Titchwell Reserves cafeteria for a coffee. The day though short of some species yielded 89 species but had rewarded us with some decent birds.

The highlights were:

20+ Red-throated Divers, Spoonbill, 70+ European White-fronted Geese, 4 Red Kite, 1m Merlin, 2 Barn Owls, Cetti’s Warbler and 3 Twite.

It was not a day for photography but here are a few of the more interesting that I took:

Quiz answers; Northern Pintail, Common Teal,