Thursday
12th May fresh NE Sunny
12C
I
should head off for Frampton RSPB reserve in Lincolnshire. There is a
wryneck there and curlew sandpiper. I don't. Instead I steadily bird
Titchwell starting with a scan of the freshwater lagoon.
There is a
gorgeous male garganey out in the middle and a lone wood sandpiper on
one of the islands. Both are soon gone though.
I
walk to and then along alone on the immense beach that takes me to
Thornham Point. I photograph items of interest on the beach and
marvel at the millions of washed up razor shells.
Along the tideline
there are also mats of bryozoa and the occasional sea urchin and
piddock. It's the razor shells though that are sometimes packed in
deep drifts and I enjoy crunching them as I walk along. Helping make
the sand on the beach, I think, as I always do when I walk along a
beach, that there are more stars in the universe than there are
grains of sand on every beach and in every desert in the World. A
constant reminder to me of the immensity of our incredible universe.
The
tick thorny bushes alongside the leaning ruin of a World War Two
lookout tower look as though they should hold a migrant. They do but
not the hoped for icterine warbler or white-spotted bluethroat. A
chiff chaff is the only bird apart from a couple of dunnocks and a
wren.
A
cuckoo comes close being chased by a couple of angry meadow pipits.
Back
at Titchwell I meet Trevor Girling again, the superb Norfolk birder
and news comes in that a bee-eater has been seen and heard over Cley
and is heading west. I position myself on the west wall walk and scan
hopefully.
A
Pallid swift is seen twice over Blakeney Marsh and is heading this
way. I scan over the reedbed and watch every swift carefully.
Three
hours later and after having joined Trevor on the meadow trail
broadwalk we have to admit that neither bird has come our way.
Trevor
leaves and I walk off towards Patsy's Pool. I stop for a while under
the willow bushes to watch a passing group of nine baby long-tailed
tits being fed by two workaholic parents. A birder excitedly runs up
to me. “Did you see it?” An osprey had just flown over and has
disappeared in the mist heading east.
The
year list is still 241, exactly twenty ahead of this time last year.
15.93
miles 345 feet up elevation 333 feet down elevation
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